Not much to say about this really. It's just like I said alongside the first Prayer for the Day, I just picked a piece of the Qur'an that I liked and then talked about it. 

It's part of my daily language to talk in terms of the Creation and God my Creator, and most people I meet seem to have no problem with the terms, even though they don't accept all of my inferences and implications. But clearly there are some people who don't think the words have any intelligible meaning at all. If God is beyond our understanding how can believers know what they are believing in.

The Qur'an uses a variety of names for God, implying qualities we can recognise through their existence in human nature, and although God cannot be seen, Qur'an describes how the Creator is indicated by signs in the Creation. Of course, when the Qur'an refers to God as "He" it doesn't mean that God is male. In the Arabic it is the female that is defined as "she", with all that isn't female being "he", so God is "He", for God is neither male nor female.

This reading is from the chapter called YaSin, verses 33-39 and 78-83.

And a sign for them is the dead land, that We quickened and brought forth from it grain, whereof they eat; and We made therein gardens of palms and vines, and therein We caused fountains to gush forth, that they might eat of its fruits and their hands' labour. What, will they not be thankful?

Glory be to Him, who created all the pairs of what the earth produces, and of themselves, and of what they know not. And a sign for them is the night; We strip it of the day and lo, they are in darkness. And the sun - it runs to a fixed resting-place; that is the ordaining of the All-mighty, the All-knowing. And the moon - We have determined it by stations, till it returns like an aged palm-bough.

"Who shall quicken the bones when they are decayed?" Say: "He shall quicken them, who originated them the first time; He knows all creation, who has made for you out of the green tree fire and lo, from it you kindle."

Is not He, who created the heavens and earth, able to create the like of them? Yes indeed; He is the All-creator, the All-knowing. His command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it "Be", and it is. So glory be to Him, in whose hand is the dominion of everything, and unto whom you shall be returned.

What do I mean when I talk of the Creator, the One Who needs only say "Be", and it is? I understand my Creator as One who gives life as when water is brought in contact with a dead land, when seeds that have lain dry and apparently lifeless in desert sands for centuries can suddenly burst into green life. It is God Who causes the rain to fall on the grain in the fields, and water to gush from the ground as springs to form irrigating rivers or palm fringed oases.

And God is One, but we can see the dual nature of Creation everywhere, a world of pairs, interdependent, like the fruit and flowers and the animals in the Ark. Like our understanding of our life experience, hot and cold, large and small, far and near, good and bad, one cannot be understood without the other. Like humans divided into male and female, opposites needing to find ways to co-exist, trying to agree on truth and to accept disagreement with tolerance.

Of course, sometimes we need a barrier between us, when we are incompatible like night and day, or fire and water, for interaction between opposites will often destroy at least one of the participants. But even in death there is re-creation out of the transformation, like the green tree consumed by fire, giving us heat while returning to the energy from which it came. Death comes to us all, and it is to their Creator that all things must return.

In the Name of the One Who is All-merciful and All-compassionate. O God! Help us to see Your purpose in our lives. Help us to distinguish what is good from what will harm us. Help us to see Your Spirit sustaining life, and comfort us and take away our fear when we are finally facing death. Amen