Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 195 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:195

فَٱسْتَجَابَ لَهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ أَنِّى لَآ أُضِيعُ عَمَلَ عَـٰمِلٍ مِّنكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ أَوْ أُنثَىٰ ۖ بَعْضُكُم مِّنۢ بَعْضٍ ۖ فَٱلَّذِينَ هَاجَرُوا۟ وَأُخْرِجُوا۟ مِن دِيَـٰرِهِمْ وَأُوذُوا۟ فِى سَبِيلِى وَقَـٰتَلُوا۟ وَقُتِلُوا۟ لَأُكَفِّرَنَّ عَنْهُمْ سَيِّـَٔاتِهِمْ وَلَأُدْخِلَنَّهُمْ جَنَّـٰتٍ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهَا ٱلْأَنْهَـٰرُ ثَوَابًا مِّنْ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ عِندَهُۥ حُسْنُ ٱلثَّوَابِ

“And their Lord responded to them, "Never will I allow to be lost the work of [any] worker among you, whether male or female; you are of one another. So those who emigrated or were evicted from their homes or were harmed in My cause or fought or were killed - I will surely remove from them their misdeeds, and I will surely admit them to gardens beneath which rivers flow as reward from Allāh, and Allāh has with Him the best reward."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Their Lord answered: no worker's work is wasted, man or woman, and the reward carries only His name.

A reflection

The only signature still there at the end

The ayah could have ended with the gardens. Instead it adds two clauses that are not about the gift at all. A reward from Allah. And with Allah is the best reward.

One commentary explains why He attaches His own name. He ascribed it to Himself to show how immense it is, because the Great and Generous gives only lavishly. Another puts it as a picture. A great king tells his servant: I shall bestow on you a robe from me. The sentence tells you the robe is of the highest honour. The size of a gift is read off the giver.

Now put your own habits beside that. We sign things.

A signwriter has lettered shopfronts in one town for thirty-one years, by hand, with a mahl stick and a sable brush. In the bottom right corner of every fascia he puts his initials, very small, in the shade colour. He is proud of them and he has every right to be; the work is good. He is also sixty-three, and the shops change hands every four or five years. On one street he can point to three places where his initials have been painted over by someone who did not know they were there.

That is not a sad story. It is simply the arrangement. Everything we make, we sign, and the signatures go under paint.

The reward in this ayah has one name on it, and that name is not painted over. Which is where vanity quietly loses its grip. The thing you most want is for your effort to still be there after you have gone, and your initials cannot secure that. It is secured by whose hand the work was for.

And it answers the uneasy thought that a God who keeps attaching His name to things sounds like a ruler fishing for credit. Read what the clause is actually doing. It is a measurement. He is telling the recipient what scale of gift to expect, because the only way to know that is to know who is giving.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.