Wonder of Wonders
Al-Risala (English), February 1991, p. 4
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
Wonder of Wonders
1991 2 February 4 Wonder of Wonders (410) Looking at the human body from a purely physical point of view, one finds that it is made up of just water, carbon, oxygen and some other chemical elements. One can even work out, as scientist Robert Patison has done, the price of the material constituents of the human body. According to his calculations, their market value is about six and a half US dollars, – about one hundred Indian rupees.
Yet out of this one hundred rupees worth of matter, God has created a human being so wonderful that no price can be set upon him. Not even seventy billion rupees can buy the priceless masterpiece that God has fashioned in the shape of the human frame.
One can appreciate the pricelessness of the human body when some part of it is lost. If one loses a hand, for instance millions of dollars will not buy a new one like it. If one loses one’s sight, all the wealth in the world will not win it back. If one’s power of speech fails one, there will be no tongue in the shops of the world, which will put one’s thoughts into words.
How wonderful that God should fashion something so wonderful out of things of no value. It is only He who can bring the dead to life; only He who has the power to convert insensate matter into conscious life, to make something out of nothing.
If a magician were to cast a spell on a stone, making it break into speech, everyone would be spellbound at his feat. The feat, which God has performed, is one of much greater complexity. He has made the inanimate matter that constitutes man’s body into a moving, talking, thinking human being. Yet God’s feat does not cause people to wonder. How blind are those who can see the skill of a conjurer’s magical feats, but not the infinitely greater feats of God’s creation! How ignorant are those who rush to become devoted disciples of anyone able to perform false tricks, without feeling any adoration for or attachment to the one who performs truly wondrous acts of creative genius. If only man were to truly discover God, he would become totally absorbed in the Lord’s wondrous feats of creation. Everything in the world would appear to him as a remarkable sign of God’s power and perfection. While dwelling in an earthly abode, he would see and feel nothing but the Lord on high.
