20:132 And command thy family to the prayer, and have patience therein. We ask no provision of thee, and it is We who shall provide thee.
And command thy family to the prayer, and have patience therein. He is commanding the servant to teach and telling him to manifest servanthood and constancy in obedience. So long as the servant is not worthy and approved, He will not accept him in service at His threshold and will not give him access in the prayer to the presence of secret whispering.
There is no good fortune beyond the fact that five times a day, by the decree of bounty, He sends the baggage-steed of the court of union at the hand of the stirrup-holder of gentleness to the hut of the servant's incapacity and records this exalted sigil on the edict of his good fortune: “I have divided the prayer between Me and My servant into two halves. When the servant says, 'Praise belongs to God,' God says, 'My servant is praising Me,'” and so on.
He kept Moses the speaking companion waiting for forty days at the promise of whispered prayer. When the turn of this community arrived, He took away the tablecloth of waiting and, five times a day, again and again, He placed the goblet of whispered prayer in the hand of the cupbearer of gentleness: “Prostrate yourself and draw near” [96:19]. This is not a bestowal of eminence on the communities over the prophets, but rather, “The weaker someone is, the gentler the Lord is to him.” The Lord of the Worlds takes care of the work of the weak such that all the strong are in wonder. A hundred thousand proximate angels dove into the ocean of bowing and prostrating, and no one talks about them. But this penniless beggar wakes up from sleep and says, “Oh, it's late.” In the splendorous scripture the Lord of the Worlds wrote this inscription of exaltation on the cape of his secret whispers: “Their sides shun their couches as they supplicate their Lord in fear and hope” [32:16].
We ask no provision of thee, and it is We who shall provide thee. Whenever someone believes that the provider in reality is the Lord and that all provision comes from Him and that the secondary causes are by His predetermination, his mark is that his heart trusts totally in Him and he cuts himself off from others. Then the Exalted Lord, in His gentleness, takes care of his work and at every moment caresses him with various sorts of generosity.
A man came before Ḥātim Aṣamm and asked him, “How are able to you pass your days, for you have no belongings and no estates.”
He said, “From His storehouse.”
He said, “Does He throw bread to you from heaven?”
He said, “Did He not have the earth, He would cast bread to me from heaven.”
Then the man said, “You are just talking words.”
He said, “Because nothing descends from heaven but words.”
He said, “I am not able to argue with you.”
He said, “Because falsehood has no ability before truth.”
O poor man! There is no illness more difficult than weak certainty. Fix your certainty on the Real, and the hand is yours.
There is the name of certainty, the knowledge of certainty, the eye of certainty, the truth of certainty, and the reality of the truth of certainty. The name of certainty belongs to the common people, the knowledge of certainty to the elect, the eye of certainty to the elect of the elect, the truth of certainty to the prophets, and the reality of the truth of certainty to Muṣ?afā. A man who becomes a man becomes so through certainty. Certainty must reach the tongue for him to be a speaker, the eye for him to be as seer, the ear for him to be a hearer, the hand for him to be taker, the foot for him to be a goer.
Muṣ?afā said, “Jesus walked on water. Had his certainty increased, he would have walked on air.” The master Abū ʿAlī Daqqāq said, “He alluded to himself, meaning, 'When I was walking on air on the night of the miʿrāj, that was because of the perfection of certainty.'”