Luqman · Makki · ayah 28 of 34

Luqman 31:28

مَّا خَلْقُكُمْ وَلَا بَعْثُكُمْ إِلَّا كَنَفْسٍ وَٰحِدَةٍ ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ سَمِيعٌۢ بَصِيرٌ

“Your creation and your resurrection will not be but as that of a single soul.[1166] Indeed, Allāh is Hearing and Seeing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Creating and raising all humanity is, for Allah, like creating and raising one soul: nothing He hears or does distracts Him from anything else.

A reflection

No front row at the resurrection

After Friday prayer, a businessman's driver waits outside the mosque with the engine running. The arrangement is that he leaves before the crowd. He prays at the end of a row near the door, and is in the car before the final greeting has faded. Everyone has noticed. Without ever saying it, he believes his time is worth more than theirs.

The ayah dissolves that belief at its root. Mā khalqukum wa-lā baʿthukum illā ka-nafsin wāḥida: your creation and your raising are only as a single soul. All of you, together, cost Him what one costs.

The early commentators explain it in a few words. He says to the few and to the many 'Be', and it is. There is no extra effort for the important, the complicated or the numerous. The businessman and the man who sweeps the car park were made with the same word. They will be raised with the same call.

This is a hard sentence for self-importance. The ego builds its worth on being costly: hard to replace, worth waiting for, owed a better seat. In the economy of creation there are no expensive people. A billion lives are not a heavier task than one.

Is this God showing off His power, as if He wanted us impressed? A creature shows off because it needs admiration. Notice where the ayah turns instead: inna Allāha samīʿun baṣīr, He hears and sees. It moves at once from His power to His attention to you. The sentence corrects our pride and calms our fear. It asks nothing for Him.

The same ease that makes no one grand makes no one lost. Humility, then, is not a pose of thinking yourself small. It is accuracy. You are exactly as easy for Him to make as the man you do not greet in the car park. You are also exactly as seen.

One Friday the businessman sends the driver home and sits until the end. He finds he has nowhere he needs to be first.

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.