Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 30 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:30

إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ إِنَّا لَا نُضِيعُ أَجْرَ مَنْ أَحْسَنَ عَمَلًا

“Indeed, those who have believed and done righteous deeds - indeed, We will not allow to be lost the reward of any who did well in deeds.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Work done well sits on a register Someone else keeps, and the verb for losing it almost never appears without a no in front.

A reflection

Nothing in His keeping goes missing

A woman spent four years surveying one stretch of coastline. Tides, soundings, the exact set of a reef at low water. The chart went to press with the publisher's name along the bottom edge and not hers. Every vessel that uses it is using her four years. The accuracy does not care whose name is on the plate.

The verse does something similar to a person's pride, and it does it quietly.

Notice first what it does not say. It does not say We shall reward. It says We do not let it go to waste. That is a sentence about Him, not about you. It announces something about His keeping of accounts rather than something about your prospects. Nothing enters that register and then quietly goes missing.

And this is where vanity gets caught out. Most of us are far more anxious about our good work being seen than about its being real. We want a witness. The arrogance is not in doing the work; it is in the quiet assumption that unwitnessed work has not quite happened. We photograph it, mention it, arrange for somebody to notice.

The ayah removes the need and the dignity of that in one stroke. The record is already being kept, perfectly, by the One whose record is the only one that will be read out. Your version of it adds nothing. It is a copy made by a clerk, in handwriting nobody will check, of a document already filed.

Which leaves an odd, light feeling if you let it land. The work matters enormously. Your account of the work matters not at all.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.