Tuesday, September 10, 2019

What It Means - Day 176

"Truly, We purified them with that which is pure - remembrance of the Abode."
Quran 38:46

This brief passage, which will be part of my way too brief commentary today, is drawn from the 38th surah, Sad. We've talked before about the fact that 29 of the 114 surahs in the Quran start with separated letters, and this one starts with the letter sad which provides the surah's name. There's a cottage industry associated with proposing theories about what these separated letters mean, but in the end it's accepted that it's a mystery known only to God. This passage is one of those lovely, and utterly necessary, reminders to live your life in a conscious, deliberate fashion. Part of it, certainly, is to think about God and the divine and the end of all things, and one of the advantages of praying five times a day is that it provides a very structured mechanism for doing just that. Moreover, and as I've stated way too many times, I believe that the best way to worship God is to live your life in a manner in which you are constantly mindful of the people around you and what they are feeling and what they need, and trying to make their lives better. That constant mindfulness is both a result of a heart's purity, but also a generator of their purity.


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