Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 174 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:174

فَٱنقَلَبُوا۟ بِنِعْمَةٍ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَفَضْلٍ لَّمْ يَمْسَسْهُمْ سُوٓءٌ وَٱتَّبَعُوا۟ رِضْوَٰنَ ٱللَّهِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ ذُو فَضْلٍ عَظِيمٍ

“So they returned with favor from Allāh and bounty, no harm having touched them. And they pursued the pleasure of Allāh, and Allāh is the possessor of great bounty.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They came back with a blessing from Allah and bounty, untouched by harm, having followed His pleasure; and His bounty is great.

A reflection

He carried one bag upstairs and thinks he moved the house

A six-year-old carries one bag up the stairs on moving day. By the evening he has told three people that he moved the house. Nobody corrects him, because it is charming at six.

This ayah is a list of returns, and one commentary counts them.

It says that when they handed their affairs over to Him and leaned on Him with their hearts, He gave them four things in return. A blessing. A bounty. The turning away of harm. And the following of His pleasure, so that they were pleased with Him and He was pleased with them.

Four items, and the input was a sentence and a march.

Then the closing clause, which is the one to slow down on. Allah is the possessor of great bounty. Not: Allah rewarded them greatly. The grammar makes the bounty a property of His, something He owns and is, rather than a response calculated against what they did.

So the four returns are drawn from a store that existed before anybody set out.

And this is where the ego has a problem, because the ego is a quantity surveyor. It cannot receive without pricing its own contribution. We do it in prayer, quietly: I kept going, I held the line, I was patient, and then this came. The causal arrow is never stated, and it is always drawn.

The child with the bag is not lying. He is doing arithmetic with the only figure he can see.

So does a Lord who announces that He owns great bounty want the acknowledgement? Look at who is described in the same breath. Men who had been beaten, wounded, frightened by a report, and had gone out with nothing. They are given the credit for following His pleasure, by name, in the same ayah. The sentence hands them the praise and keeps the accounting honest.

That is the opposite of a Lord needing the attribution. He states where the surplus came from, and then He names them for it.

So take the best thing that has happened to you in the last two years. Write the two columns honestly: what you did, and what was given. Then notice that even your column needed a body, a mind, a willingness and an opportunity, none of which you manufactured.

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.