The third luminous aspect of God’s sufficiency

 

 

Having found my attachment to the world to have been severed after suffering the oppression of those exiles and illnesses, belief recalled to me that I was destined for perpetual happiness in an eternal world, an everlasting realm. I then gave up sighing regretfully, which only caused further grief and yearning, and became cheerful and happy. However, this ideal or goal of the spirit and the final result of human nature could only be realized through the infinite Power of an Absolutely All-Powerful One, Who knows and records the action and rest and conduct and states, in word and deed, of all His creatures, and through His conferring limitless favor and importance on humans, whom He takes as His friends and addressees, and to whom He has given a rank superior to all beings despite their absolute impotence. Reflecting on these two points—namely, the activity of such a Power and the importance in reality of apparently impotent and insignificant human beings—I sought an explanation that would deepen belief and satisfy the heart. Again I had recourse to the verse, God is sufficient for us; how excellent a Guardian He is, and it told me to note the suffix “-na,” (“for us”) and to be attentive to the beings that are saying, “God is sufficient for us,” with me either verbally or through the tongue of their disposition.

I at once looked and saw that innumerable birds and flies (which are miniature birds) and innumerable animals, plants and trees were, like me, reciting, God is sufficient for us; how excellent a Guardian He is! through the tongue of their disposition. They recall to everyone the following fact: that they have such a Guardian Who guarantees all their essential necessities of life that before our eyes and particularly in the spring, His vast and all-majestic Power creates in utmost abundance, with the greatest ease, on a vast scale, with the greatest art, and in balanced and well-ordered fashion, and in forms all different from one another, with no defect, fault, or confusion at all, from eggs, drops of fluids, grains, and seeds that look very much like each other and whose component elements are the same, a hundred thousand species of birds, hundreds of thousands of animals, hundreds of thousands of types of plants, and hundreds of thousands of varieties of trees. The similarity and resemblance among all these beings despite the infinite difference demonstrate to us His Unity and Oneness, and inform us that there cannot be any interference or participation in those acts of His Lordship and Creativity. Those who want to understand my personal identity and human nature as a believing man, which is like that of all believers, should look at the meaning of the ‘I’ included in the first person plural ‘us’ in God is sufficient for us. What is my apparently insignificant, needy being, or that of any believer? What is life? What is humanity? What is Islam? What is certain, verified belief? What is knowledge of God? How should love be? They can find the answers to all these questions.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi