The Love of God for His creation pt2

The Love of God for Humanity Part 2 of 3
Jibreel Keresztes, University Graduate

Praise be to God The Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, and peace and blessings be on his prophet Muhammad, his family and all his followers. As we have discussed in part one of this article, God The Most High loves but He is not love. He possesses the attribute of Love but in the most perfect of forms, without carrying the aspects of jealousy, desire and weakness. God is The Most Perfect and loves in the most perfect way.

The two attributes which embody a special love for the creation, a love that cannot be described or cannot be given justice by using the word love alone; the two attributes are Ar-Rahman (The Most Gracious), and Ar-Raheem (The Most Merciful). The fascinating and miraculous nature (as any Muslim would argue) of the Arabic language is that many profound words cannot be translated in another language by using only one word. I was thinking one day about the statement : "A picture is worth a thousand words", and came to realize that in Arabic it is the other way. A word is worth a thousand pictures, or a thousand descriptions.

We will start by looking at the word Ar-Rahman. It can be translated as the Most Gracious, The Most Lovingly Beneficent, The Most Kind and Giving, The Most Infinitely Good. The word Rahman comes from the root word RAHM. The following Arabic connotations are found in the Arabic language: to love, to have tenderness, gentleness, to have mercy, pity, to show favor and goodness. The word Rahman, in the words of the scholars such as ibn Al Qaim has the meaning of the abundant and all encompassing love that God showers on His creation without any effort on our behalf.

In a normal love relationship there are two people. The wife loves the husband and back, the mother loves the son and he loves his mother. But God loves us without asking anything in return. There are people in this world who do not even admit God’s existence, swear at God and hate God, yet God showers them with His abundant love day and night. Day and night such people breath, have food on their tables, and have families and are much more fortunate than others, yet they do not recognize the love that they have been given.

What better way to show and express love than through action. On one occasion a person of a certain faith came to me and told me that his God loves him more than my God loves me because in his holy book there are many references to love. The first thing that came to my mind was that we have the same God. The second thing that came to my mind was that love is not in saying I love you to someone, but in showing it through action.

Verily God loves us, if He did not create us, we would not be here. Verily God loves us, if not we would perish. If you ate a good meal today, drank some clean water, and you were able to breath, know that God loves you. If you are sick, and you did not have the blessing to have the articles mentioned above, know that God still loves you for you have experienced life with its good and bad. If you are stricken by poverty and have lost love ones, or you are on the verge of disaster, know that God still loves you, for you were born in this world and you have experienced at one point or another the beauty of love. (To be continued with part 3)