Ramadan Night 23 - The Sixth Entry

What! Are ye the more

Difficult to create

Or the heaven (above)?
(Allah) hath constructed it:
On high hath He raised
Its canopy, and He hath
Given it order and perfection.
Its night doth He
Endow with darkness,
And its splendour doth He
Bring out (with light).
And the earth, moreover,
Hath He extended
(To a wide expanse).
S.79 A.27-30

What a beautiful, humbling reminder for us - we are but one of God's creations, blessed with incredible gifts and responsibilities, yet so insignificant in design, requiring only an after thought from God  to bring forth. I think a lot about nature these days, and I think about man's relationship to it and God.  We tend to look in two directions at nature - up and down, but not as we should, not in the same glance.  When we look down at animals and other life, we take it as a coronation, a testament to our ascendancy.  It has been a dangerous perspective historically, for as we grew comfortable, as we became civilized, we mistook this relative elevation for our own deification.  

We then did the unimaginable, we looked up and out at the majesty of nature, and disconnected it from God.  When we now look up into space, we do not so in wonder, but in arrogant calculation with dreams of conquest and exploitation.  We have pushed God to the edge of our universe and will chase Him further still when the expanse of space no longer outstrips our  avarice. And many of us have stopped raising our gaze at all, not wanting to dare His scrutiny as we cruelly rule this earthly world. What a poor substitute for God we have become, petty and lascivious manipulating our resources, mistreating His creatures and each other, trading malice and jealousy for forgiveness and grace. 

These words are here to remind us, to place us in the continuum of His dominion, to direct our gaze up and down, to provide a humble perspective to contemplate His Being, our faith. His creatures are our responsibility, not our toys or playthings.  The beauty and incomprehensibility of the universe around us is the context He provides to humble us, to bring Him to our minds and hearts each time we look around, each time we look up.

I think a lot about man, nature, and God - I dare not divorce one from another.