Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 68 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:68

أَفَرَءَيْتُمُ ٱلْمَآءَ ٱلَّذِى تَشْرَبُونَ

“And have you seen the water that you drink?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Of everything water does for a human being, the challenge names the one use in which you do nothing at all.

A reflection

The one use in which you do nothing

A submarine on a long patrol makes its own fresh water. There is a still, there is power, there is a log, and every litre is counted. It is a serious piece of engineering and the crew are proud of it.

And it makes nothing. It takes water that was already there and removes what was in it.

That is the whole of the human relationship with water, scaled up or down. Dig, lift, pipe, filter, meter, bill, treat, store. Every one of those is handling. None of them is making.

The previous challenge at least granted us a verb. You plough; who grows it. Here the grant is smaller. You drink.

One commentary notices the shrinkage and builds an argument on it. Over the crop He said what you till, which credits them with an effort. Over the water He said: did you send it down, where you have no work in it at all, so it is pure gift.

There is nothing left to be proud of in the sentence. Pride needs a seam between what was given and what you added, and over the drinking of water there is no seam. The vanity has nowhere to attach.

Which is why this is the gentlest of the four challenges and the hardest to argue with. A man can tell himself a long story about his harvest. Nobody has ever told a story about how he came to have water.

And there is a mercy folded into the choice of use. Of all the things He could have named, He named the one you cannot do without for three days. He did not pick the rare gift. He picked the one that arrives this afternoon.

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.