God, Sustainer of the heavens and Sustainer of the earths, ∗ Sustainer of all the worlds, and His is the sublimity in the heavens and the earth, and He is the Mighty, the Wise. ∗ And His is the dominion, Sustainer of the heavens, and He is the Mighty, the Wise.

What has most attracted the attention of the unfair and the unthinking is narrations like these. The reality of the matter is this:

With our narrow minds and short views in this world, we know how great we imagine the rewards of Moses and Aaron (Upon whom be peace) to be. The reward the Absolutely Compassionate One will give to one of His infinitely needy servants in the world of eternity and everlasting happiness in return for a single invocation may be equal to the reward of those two, but equal to the rewards as we conceive of them and surmise them to be.

For example, there is a primitive, uncouth man who has never seen the king and does not know the majesty of his rule. He imagines a village headman, and with his limited ideas thinks of the king as a more exalted version of him. Long ago with us even, there was a simple-minded tribe who used to say: “Our chief knows what the sultan does as he cooks his bulgur soup on his stove in a saucepan.” That is to say, they imagined the sultan in such a narrow situation and so common a form that he cooked his own wheat soup; they supposed him to have the grandness of a captain. Now, if someone were to say to a member of the tribe: “If you do this job for me today, I’ll give you as much grandeur as you think the sultan has; that is, a rank as high as a captain.” To say that is right, because with his limited mind, the tribesman can only conceive of the grandeur of kingship as the grandness of a captain.

Thus, with our worldly views and narrow minds, we cannot envisage the true rewards which look to the hereafter, even as much as that primitive man. We cannot reckon the true rewards of Moses and Aaron (Upon whom be peace), which are unknown to us. For according to the rule of similes and comparisons, the unknown is compared to the known. So the true reward, which we do not know, for an invocation of one of God’s believing servants is compared with the rewards that we do know and may surmise.

Moreover, the surface of the sea and the heart of a droplet are equal when it comes to holding a total reflection of the sun. The difference is only in quality. The reward reflected in the mirrors of the ocean-like spirits of Moses and Aaron (Upon whom be peace) is exactly the same in nature as the reward that a believing servant, who is like a droplet, receives from a Qur’anic verse. They are the same in nature and quantity, while their quality is dependent on capacity.