"O you who believe! Reverence God and let every soul consider what it has sent forth for the morrow; and reverence God. Truly God is Aware of whatsoever you do."
Quran 59:13
Here is a passage I culled out of surah 59, sometimes referred to as "The Gathering." My fear is that the hearty souls who check in to suffer through my ill-formed blathering may be even more bored than usual because I'm almost magnetically drawn to the same sort of surah. Truthfully, I'm not trying to cherry-pick only passages that agree with my basic spiritual worldview, although I suppose each of us is perpetually guilty of that in one form or another. We see in the mainstream media, as some homes always have MSNBC on and others only FoxNews, but I think it's true in our sometimes too focused fascination with a particular type of surah or or Biblical book. As we know, I seem to be always drawn to passages which either speak to the universality of Islam and its relationship to other religions or what the faith means on a daily, real-world basis, or, as I think I would argue in this case, both. I do think there is an undeniable universality to this passage in that it would apply at all time to all faiths, mainly because it asks us, no matter our spiritual orientation, to consider what we've been told to do and what we're doing. Essentially, are we talking the talk and walking the walk, to put it more colloquially. As Nasr tells us, "Let every soul consider what it has sent forth for the morrow indicates that everyone should reflect upon the deeds and evaluation how they may fare on the Day of Judgment." This just screams Noble Eight-fold Path to me and a very human Buddhist path to Enlightenment. In the end God can send forth all the amazing messages imaginable, but if we don't consider every one of our actions in relation to them then the world is one big divine echo chamber. And it's not simply that God is Aware, but that we are aware.
Quran 59:13
Here is a passage I culled out of surah 59, sometimes referred to as "The Gathering." My fear is that the hearty souls who check in to suffer through my ill-formed blathering may be even more bored than usual because I'm almost magnetically drawn to the same sort of surah. Truthfully, I'm not trying to cherry-pick only passages that agree with my basic spiritual worldview, although I suppose each of us is perpetually guilty of that in one form or another. We see in the mainstream media, as some homes always have MSNBC on and others only FoxNews, but I think it's true in our sometimes too focused fascination with a particular type of surah or or Biblical book. As we know, I seem to be always drawn to passages which either speak to the universality of Islam and its relationship to other religions or what the faith means on a daily, real-world basis, or, as I think I would argue in this case, both. I do think there is an undeniable universality to this passage in that it would apply at all time to all faiths, mainly because it asks us, no matter our spiritual orientation, to consider what we've been told to do and what we're doing. Essentially, are we talking the talk and walking the walk, to put it more colloquially. As Nasr tells us, "Let every soul consider what it has sent forth for the morrow indicates that everyone should reflect upon the deeds and evaluation how they may fare on the Day of Judgment." This just screams Noble Eight-fold Path to me and a very human Buddhist path to Enlightenment. In the end God can send forth all the amazing messages imaginable, but if we don't consider every one of our actions in relation to them then the world is one big divine echo chamber. And it's not simply that God is Aware, but that we are aware.
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