The Ecosystem Dining at Your Table

The Ecosystem Dining at Your Table

God Provides for the Creatures through What He Has Provided for You

How beautiful it is that Allah makes us the means for how He also provides provision to other creations.

What I conceptually might call jiran al-rizq جريان الرزق reminds us that God had ordained the share from what He gave us for more than just ourselves. We buy food that feeds not only us but those around us… and maybe an entire ecosystem of wild animals.

That cheeky Egyptian cat that swipes your falafel from the table, or the serial thieves, that are otherwise called seagulls, snatching food right from your hand…

all of it was ordained for them.

You bought yourself a sandwich, but God intended for you to buy it to feed the homeless man or the orphan passing by begging you to give some food.

You opened a packet of peanuts but some spilled all over the grass and then the birds called out to each other, in praise of their Lord, “Our Lord has provided for us! Come quickly, there is food here!”

You spilt some water unknowingly on a surface, but that was how God intended to provide water to an insect on an unusually hot summer day.

Some of what you were eating crumbled onto the pavement and that is how God would provide for the ant colony. You didn’t hear the ant praise her Lord, at the sight of this abundance rushing back to tell the other ants. To you they were just crumbs, but to the ant they were sustenance that had suddenly come from their Lord…

The little drop of sugared water replenished a tired bee.

‎‫۞ وَمَا مِن دَاۤبَّةࣲ فِی ٱلۡأَرۡضِ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱللَّهِ رِزۡقُهَا وَیَعۡلَمُ مُسۡتَقَرَّهَا وَمُسۡتَوۡدَعَهَاۚ كُلࣱّ فِی كِتَـٰبࣲ مُّبِینࣲ﴿ ٦ ﴾

There is not a creature that moves on earth whose provision is not His concern. He knows where it lives and its [final] resting place: it is all [there] in a clear record.

Hūd, Ayah 6

Subhanallah!

How beautiful the nuance behind irzaq إرزاق …

it’s not random or solely the product of hard work.

It arrives in accordance with what has been apportioned long before creation existed. It finds its recipient!

Provision reached every creation of God, nor because of what it possessed, earned or sacrificed, but simply because the Most Merciful had lovingly ordained its provision.

‫إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلرَّزَّاقُ ذُو ٱلۡقُوَّةِ ٱلۡمَتِینُ﴿ ٥٨ ﴾‬

God is the Provider, the Lord of Power, the Ever Mighty.

Adh-Dhāriyāt, Ayah 58

Whether you intended to give from what God has given you, or not, the recipient of that provision tenderly receives it from their Lord…