Al-A'la الأعلى

Makki · 19 ayat · 19 with pondering

• Ayah 1The surah's first word asks you to set your Lord above everything you say, picture and serve, beginning with your forehead on the floor.
• Ayah 2You were measured before you were made, then levelled and balanced until every part fitted, and none of that was your own design.
• Ayah 3Everything was given its measure and then shown its way, so your best instincts were guidance long before they were talent.
• Ayah 4He brings out every green field that feeds a flock, so the meal you are proud to provide began as grass you never planted.
• Ayah 5The green that feeds the flock becomes dark debris for the flood to carry off, so hold your green seasons as loans.
• Ayah 6He rushed to hold each word before it slipped away, until the promise came: We will make you recite, and you will not forget.
• Ayah 7Even the best memory ever given rested on Allah's will, and He sees both what we say aloud and the fear hidden behind it.
• Ayah 8The promise is not only an easier road: He will make you into the kind of walker the road of ease was made for.
• Ayah 9Pass on what you were given, placed where it can be heard; your task is to remind well, not to force anyone to remember.
• Ayah 10The reminder takes root in the one who stands in awe, and that awe is not panic but the respect that grows from knowing.
• Ayah 11The one who loses most is not the one who never heard the reminder, but the one who works hard to keep walking round it.
• Ayah 12The one who ran from the reminder walks into the greatest fire, and every small fire of this world was only a reminder of it.
• Ayah 13The worst of the Fire is not only its heat but its stalemate: no death to end it, and no life worth the name.
• Ayah 14Success is not getting on top; it is the patient work of cleaning and growing your own soul, for your own sake.
• Ayah 15Real remembrance does not stay in the head: the heart recalls whom it will stand before, and the body follows it into prayer.
• Ayah 16The fault is not enjoying this life but giving it first place, only because it is near and the next life is out of sight.
• Ayah 17Weigh the two lives by the two tests we use for anything worth having: which is better, and which will still be there.
• Ayah 18Purify yourself, remember your Lord, pray and prefer what lasts: not new advice, but the oldest message there is.
• Ayah 19The surah closes with two of the oldest voices, Ibrāhīm and Mūsā: you are not the first to hear this, nor the last.