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[30:54] GOD is the One who created you weak, then granted you after the weakness strength, then substituted after the strength weakness and gray hair. He creates whatever He wills. He is the Omniscient, the Omnipotent.
We see that the human being is created weak. Through God’s mercy, He can give us strength after weakness. But we must understand that we were created weak and only God can give us strength. Then God lets us know that He can take away our strength and make us weak again, and this time it comes with gray hair. And in the final sentence of that verse, God reminds us we are powerless and have no say in any matters; He creates and does whatever He wants to. He is all-knowing.
Weak is defined as: 1) lacking strength, deficient in physical vigor or not able to sustain or exert much weight, pressure or strain; 2) mentally or intellectually deficient, not firmly decided, resulting from or indicating lack of judgment or discernment, not able to withstand temptation or persuasion; 3) not factually grounded or logically presented (a weak argument); 4) not having or exerting authority or political power.
As we can see society has defined weakness in several different ways. In my own life I see I am weak in many ways.
I lack physical strength, which shows up when I try to loosen a bolt on a car. Even after spraying with WD-40, I frequently cannot budge it. I lack mental strength, which shows up in my inability to find anything in my house. I just think it’s a weakness in my mind—I don’t focus or try hard enough. I’m weak in factual grounding, which shows up in how little I actually know.
When I research a topic for a sermon, I sometimes get inundated with all the information and realize it would take years to fully grasp the topic, so I take on another subject. I know I am weak in authority or power, because, thank God, He has shown me that God is running everything. But sometimes in my weakness I forget this important fact and try to make things go my way. Then God reminds me that He is in charge. Truly everyone is weak in this area of authority or power, but most people don’t realize it.
[4:28] GOD wishes to lighten your burden, for the human being is created weak.
Plain and simple, we are created weak. If we are created weak, obviously, we will have a lot of weaknesses. God describes humans as being: weak (4:28), selfish (4:128), despondent and unappreciative (11:9), impatient (17:11), preoccupied and heedless (17:83), stingy (17:100), transgressing (14:34), argumentative (18:54), ignorant (33:72), desperate (41:49), anxious (70:19), utterly lost (103:2).
Even though we have all of these weak traits, if we implore God alone, the way He teaches us in the Quran, and attempt to lead a righteous life, He may send His mercy upon us to remove our weaknesses and grant us strength.
Strength is defined as: 1) the quality or state of being strong, capacity for exertion or endurance; 2) power to resist force, solidity, toughness; 3) power of resisting attack; 4) legal, logical or moral force; a strong attribute or inherent asset; 5) force as measured in numbers.
Looking at it in my life, I realized that the concept of being strong is based on a relative psychology, meaning you perceive yourself as having strength based on what you know. For example, when I played basketball with my youngest son, I crushed him; I wore him out. But when I tried the same tactics against my older son, nothing worked. He overwhelmed me.
I was strong against one son, but had no strength against the other.
In legal, logical or moral force, it’s still relative to the situation. I am very strong when speaking with disbelievers who denounce God’s power, but I know that I am not as strong as other submitters who have been longer on God’s path.
In the area of a strong inherent asset, I thank God for the strengths He has provided for me. I feel like God gave me strength with mathematical problem solving, story-telling and being able to speak in front of people. But there is always someone who is better at math, story-telling and public speaking. I ask God to help all of us strengthen any inherent assets He provided us with that we may utilize them to worship God alone.
God can give us strength in our faith. In 74:31, He used the number 19 to strengthen the faith of the faithful. When people mobilize against us, if we don’t fear them, God will strengthen our faith (3:173). Our faith can be strengthened just by hearing God’s revelations and responding to them (8:2). God tests us to prove the strength of our faith. If we steadfastly persevere and lead a righteous life, it shows strength (3:186). If we follow God’s commands, it shows strength (4:66). And we thank God that He doesn’t ask of us more than we can bear (7:42, 2:286, 23:62).
God can strengthen our foothold (47:7, 2:250, 3:147). He can strengthen our heart (8:10, 11:120) and He gave us a beautiful prayer: [18:14] We strengthened their hearts when they stood up and proclaimed: “Our only Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth. We will never worship any other god beside Him. Otherwise, we would be far astray.”
It seems that God created us weak as a test to see if we can overcome our
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