Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 18 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:18

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

“So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The sun works the day shift for you in every season, and the third refrain catches us crediting the weather instead of its Lord.

A reflection

Strawberries in December

A supermarket sells strawberries in December and asparagus in October. Nothing is out of season any more, the advertising says, as if the year had finally been brought to heel. Pushing a trolley under strip lights, it is easy to feel that we have beaten the calendar.

Then the refrain comes, straight after the Lord of the two easts and the two wests. So which of your Lord's favours will you both deny?

One major commentary spells out the favour in question. The sun has been made to serve you across these two risings and two settings. It runs constantly for your benefit, for your worldly good and your livelihoods. Another lists what the swing between them brings: air kept in balance, the change of seasons, and in each season whatever suits it.

The December strawberry is not a victory over that order. It is someone else's summer, flown in from the other side of the sun's swing. The same two easts and two wests are serving another hemisphere, under the same Lord. We have not escaped the seasons. We have only learned to borrow other people's.

That is a useful deflation of a very modern pride: the sense that technology has made us masters of time. The lights, the freight, the cold chain, the forecast. All of it rides on a year we did not set and cannot stop.

He gains nothing from our admitting it (35:15). We gain an accurate picture. Every season you have eaten from, near or far, is a season He turned. It was worked for you by a sun that does not take a day off.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.