Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 71 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:71

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

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

Saheeh International

Essence

After 'good and beautiful', the question turns to the good people already given to us here, and to how easily we stop seeing them.

A reflection

The week she was away

Most readers hear this refrain, coming after the Garden's 'good and beautiful' companions, as a question about the future. Something promised, for later.

The Prophet ﷺ pointed at the present. This world is provision, he said, and the best provision of this world is a righteous wife. Muslim records it. The Quran describes the same gift for both spouses. 'He made for you spouses from among yourselves, that you might find rest in them' (30:21). And He placed between them affection and mercy.

So a sample of 'good and beautiful' companionship is not only in the Garden. Many readers already live with it.

A man's wife goes to look after her mother for a week. On the first evening he enjoys the quiet. By Wednesday he cannot find clean shirts. The children's packed lunches have gone wrong twice, nobody has remembered his nephew's birthday, and the house feels oddly cold. On Friday night he rings her, not to ask where something is, but to tell her he had not understood.

He had been living beside a favour so steady that it had become furniture.

That is the denial this refrain catches in a long marriage. Not cruelty. Not neglect, even. Just the slow loss of sight that comes with daily goodness.

The same is true in reverse, for a wife whose husband's quiet decency has become invisible to her. The verse in 30:21 names affection and mercy as a sign. Signs are meant to be looked at.

Tonight, name one good thing your spouse does so reliably that you have stopped seeing it. Then tell them you have seen it.

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.