Al-Furqan · Makki · ayah 46 of 77

Al-Furqan 25:46

ثُمَّ قَبَضْنَـٰهُ إِلَيْنَا قَبْضًا يَسِيرًا

“Then We [retract and] hold it with Us for a brief grasp.[1029]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The shade that stretched out at dawn is drawn back to Allah gently, piece by piece: nothing you cast was ever yours to keep.

A reflection

Every shadow goes home

For thirty years every Eid in the family happened at one uncle's house. Forty people, two sittings, the children asleep on coats upstairs. His home was the shade the whole family gathered under. Then he had a stroke. This year the gathering moves to his nephew's house, and he is wheeled in and settled in a corner chair. Everyone is kind. Nobody asks his opinion about the seating.

This ayah completes a picture begun one ayah earlier. Allah stretched the shade out across the earth, and then, He says, qabaḍnāhu ilaynā: We drew it in, to Us. One commentary says the word ilaynā, 'to Us', is there to make one thing plain. The shadow returns to Him alone. No one shares in removing it, just as no one shared in making it.

That small word is a quiet correction to the ego. Each of us casts something across the world: influence, reputation, a name that walks into rooms before we do. In the morning of a life it reaches a long way, and it is easy to believe it is ours. The ayah calls it what it is. A shadow, lent for a time, and drawn back to its Owner on His schedule.

The humbling point is not that our reach is small. It is that it was never ours. Arrogance is mistaking a shadow for a possession. You may enjoy the shade, and shelter others in it, but the hand that gathers it is not yours.

Is this a Maker fishing for compliments, pointing at His own handiwork? Allah says elsewhere that He is the Rich, free of all need, and it is people who are poor towards Him (35:15). Our praise adds nothing to Him. What the ayah gives is information for our sake: who owns the shade, so that we stop building our lives on owning it.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.