Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 24 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:24

وَمِنْ ءَايَـٰتِهِۦ يُرِيكُمُ ٱلْبَرْقَ خَوْفًا وَطَمَعًا وَيُنَزِّلُ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً فَيُحْىِۦ بِهِ ٱلْأَرْضَ بَعْدَ مَوْتِهَآ ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَـَٔايَـٰتٍ لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْقِلُونَ

“And of His signs is [that] He shows you the lightning [causing] fear and aspiration, and He sends down rain from the sky by which He brings to life the earth after its lifelessness. Indeed in that are signs for a people who use reason.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Lightning He shows you and rain He sends: a sign for those whose reason holds the eye on the sky long enough to ask who.

A reflection

Fire out of a cloud of water

The two faces of lightning, fear and hope, are pondered in full at 13:12, and the dead earth revived by rain at 30:19. This ayah adds a few things of its own.

One classical commentator stopped at the plain strangeness of it. A cloud holds nothing but water and air. Yet fire leaps out of it and burns mountains far away. He then granted the natural philosophers their explanation of wind tearing through cloud. But that wind, he replied, is itself an event with a cause, and every cause leads back to the One who needs none.

That is the ego's lesson. Naming a mechanism can feel like owning it. The flash still arrives without asking us. We never request it; yurīkum, He shows it to you. He gains nothing from our watching. The person who watches, and remembers who is showing, is the one who gains.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.