'Abasa · Makki · ayah 25 of 42

'Abasa 80:25

أَنَّا صَبَبْنَا ٱلْمَآءَ صَبًّا

“How We poured down water in torrents,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every meal begins with water poured lavishly from a sky no one can climb into; the one who pours it asks only to be recognised.

A reflection

How do the clouds not fall?

The surah told us to look at our food. Now it tells us where to begin looking. 'We poured down water, pouring it abundantly.'

One classical commentator slows down over this, and asks the reader to slow down with him. Think, he says, how the rain comes into being, carrying such vast quantities of water. Think how it stays suspended in the sky despite its great weight. Reflect on its near causes and its distant ones, until something of the traces of Allah's light, justice and wisdom begins to shine through.

Picture a boy of seven lying on the grass in a park on a summer afternoon, watching enormous clouds drift over. He asks his mother how the clouds stay up when they are full of rain. She starts to answer, then stops. She has no idea. Neither, really, does anyone in the park. They have lived their whole lives under clouds carrying lakes of water. Not one of them has wondered why the lakes do not fall until they do.

That is the question the ayah wants to reopen. We have grown so used to rain that we treat it as weather, a nuisance for picnics and commutes. The Quran speaks of it in the first person plural of majesty: We poured. Not 'it rained'. Someone poured.

This is where the ego is quietly put in its place. Human beings can store water, clean it, pump it and sell it. No one has ever made a single cloud rise from the sea and empty itself over a particular valley at a particular time. The most powerful person in the world is as dependent on that pouring as the poorest.

A person might ask why Allah draws attention to His own work like this. Does He need recognition? He does not. The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever credits the rain to Allah's grace and mercy is a believer in Him (Sahih al-Bukhari). The recognition is not for Allah's benefit. It keeps the heart of the one who says it truthful, humble and rightly connected.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.