Allah's Care for You [Translated Extract]
Ibn Ata'illah al-Sakandari on how Allah has watched over you, managing your affairs with benevolence from the Day of Decrees.
Know that Al-Haqq, be He glorified, has watched over you, managing and attending to you through all stages of your existence with benevolence and kindness. First, He established His excellent choice for you on the Day of Decrees, the day when He said, “‘Am I not your Nurturing Lord?’ they said ‘You are certainly, we bear witness’.”[1] From His excellent arranging for you that day was His acquainting Himself with you and you recognised Him. He manifested Himself to you and you witnessed Him. It was He who made you speak and inspired you with the response that affirmed that He is indeed your Nurturer and Lord and that He is one and alone.
Then He made you a drop of sperm deposited in the loins of your fathers. He took the responsibility for you there, managing and preserving you as well as the one you were inside of. He continued His support to you through the medium of your father and his fathers all the way back to your father Adam o. He then cast you into the womb of your mother and He took care of you with His excellent oversight. He made the womb an earth in which your nourishment and growth could take place and a storehouse from where you could receive your life.
He combined and then united the two (sperm and ovum), upon which divine wisdom demonstrated the secret of existence being built upon pairs. He then made you into a blood clot ready for whatever Allah, be He glorified, wanted to bestow upon you. Then into a lump of flesh in which He cleft your form and established your shape. Then He blew into you your spirit (ruh). He nourished you in the womb through blood, His sustenance entering into you before you even exited out into the world. He kept you safe in the womb of your mother until your body members strengthened and your shape solidified, so that you could make your emergence to what He decreed, both for and against you, so that you could come into this home and come to know His abounding favours and justice upon you.
When He brought you into this world, and He – be He glorified – knew that you could not chew food with the absence of molars, yet alone any teeth at all, He made flow two breasts of gentle nourishment and entrusted them to the mercy in your mother’s heart. Every time the milk stopped flowing, the mercy He placed for you in her heart, would urge the milk to flow on, unceasingly and without fail. Then He busied your father and mother in ensuring your welfare, in showering kindnesses upon you, and looking upon you with the eye of love.
Is this anything other than His compassion that He confers upon His slaves in the guise of fathers and mothers, through which He makes known His kindness and love? In reality, nothing supported you but His nurturing. Nothing favoured you, but His divinity.
He enjoined upon your father to undertake your care until you came of age, which compelled him to treat you with kindness. Allah lifted the pen of recording your responsibilities until the time of your maturity and understanding. Till you became middle-aged or elderly, His bestowals and bounties did not cease. Then, He calls back your soul, gathers you to Him and He makes you stand right before Him. Then, He delivers you from His punishment and He enters you into His reward. Then He removes the veils between Himself and you! Then, He prepares for you a throne amongst a gathering of His friends (awliya) and loved ones!
The Glorious states, “Truly the pious are amidst Gardens and a stream, upon a seat of truth before an Omnipotent King.”[2] Then which of His kindnesses will you thank Him for? Which of His favours or generosities can you keep in mind? Listen to His words, be He Glorified, “Whatever blessing you have, it is from Allah.”[3] Know that you have never left, nor can you ever leave His kindness and blessings.
If you desire a declaration of the successive stages of your development and life, hear the Glorified’s words, “And indeed We created man from a draught of clay. Then We made him a drop in a secure dwelling place. Then of the drop We created a blood clot, then of the blood clot We created a lump of flesh, then of the lump of flesh We created bones and We clothed the bones with flesh; then We brought him into being as another creation. Blessed is Allah, the best of creators! Then indeed you shall die thereafter. Then surely you shall be raised up on the Day of Resurrection.”[4] Flashes of light will appear to you to illuminate its meanings.
In all this is what compels you, O slave, to surrender to Him and trust upon Him. What will aid you to do this is abandoning the worry over how He manages yours affairs and that you abstain from contesting His decrees, for Allah alone provides success.
Imam Ibn Ata’illah Al-Sakandari
Extracted from The Illumination on Abandoning Self-Direction (Al-Tanwir fi Isqat Al-Tadbir)
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[1] Quran 7:172
[2] Quran 54:54-55
[3] Quran 16:53
[4] Quran 23:12-16
Originally published on the Dhikr Substack.