“All that we relate to thee of the stories of the apostles with it We make firm thy heart: in them there cometh to thee the Truth, as well as an exhortation and a message of remembrance to those who believe.”
(Hud, 11:120)
Along with many lessons they contain, the stories of THE QURAN constitute a great source of power for believers.
Those stories are, first of all, the very truth; they are completely experienced facts. There is no room for doubt in them. Therefore, the people who read those stories find themselves in the real incidents of this world without any hesitation.
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However, it should not be forgotten that there are serious differences between that real world, which the Quran tells us, and the life we live. The reason for it is the difference between the Quran’s viewpoint and our viewpoint on events.
We watch the world through an extremely narrow gap of time and space. Our boundaries are the place where we are and the moment we live in. This country, this city, today, this minute—our world is confined to such a narrow space.
However, this small and narrow world appears as a whole world to us. We think that there is no other place other than the place we are in and as if all time consists of the moment we live in and that it will never end. Therefore, small incidents seem big to us. A very near future seems distant to us. Things that happen to us, whether good or bad, seem like they will never end. That is why, our good days lead us to heedlessness, and our bad days lead us to pessimism.
As for the viewpoint of the Quran, it is eternal. When it handles an event, it sees and shows it with its past and future, with all its causes and consequences. While a few years of life seem like it will never end to us, the Quran summarizes the 950 years that Noah spent in his tribe in a few sentences. However, so many incidents, ordeals, and hardships fit into that life.
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There are incidents of so many years, tears, tortures, efforts, and tests in the story of the Prophet Moses (Musa), which we read and pass on in a few minutes.
Since the Quran tells us all those things together, those incidents that happened do not seem a lot to us. We do not experience the excitement of encountering magicians because we know the result. What happens to the magicians after they believe does not upset us much either because we know that their suffering subsided and they attained Allah’s mercy. We do not think much about what believers went through before a terrible event such as the splitting of the sea, and how they floundered in hopelessness and helplessness because the end of the adventure is clearly visible from the place where we are.
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Let us think about it now:
If we had been in the place and time when any of those incidents took place, could we have been this comfortable?
Would those adventures, the results of which we had not seen yet, not have seemed like they would never end?
Or we can think of it as follows:
If we could look at the life we live from that viewpoint, what would we see?
How much space do the days and years that seem unending to us occupy in real life and real time?
When we look at the life we live in the light of the Quran, we find an extremely comforting answer to that question. One of the most important things that the Quran brings to a believer is such an expanse of time.
What makes us experience this awareness in the most effective way is the stories of the Quran, which consist of facts throughout.
Thanks to those stories, we are saved from being drowned in a short moment. We have the opportunity to see and evaluate the things that happen to us with the past and future, together with all their consequences.
We see that the struggles that fill our lives are not limited to vicious efforts, that they exist in a sequence that has been going on since the time of the Prophet Adam and that they are based on a reality that yields eternal results.
A word spoken for Allah, a step taken for Allah and an ordeal suffered for Allah reach eternity together with the great causes of great people whom the Quran shows us as guides. Even if our body is in a small part of this world and in a narrow space of time, our soul takes a breath in the realm of infinity that the Quran shows us.
The news of the Quran strengthens the hearts like that.
If one reads them in order to take lessons, there are really great exhortations and messages of remembrance in the news given by the Quran.