Also, like disciplined soldiers, orderly ships, wondrous aeroplanes, or marvellous lamps, the stars in the arena of the heavens, and in their seas and vast spaces, show the glittering splendour of the sovereignty of Your Godhead. As is suggested by the duties of the sun —one star among the members of that army— which are related to its planets and our earth, some of its companions, the other stars, look to the worlds of the hereafter and are not without duties; they are the suns of eternal worlds.
O Necessarily Existent! O Single One of Unity!
These wondrous stars, these strange suns and moons, are subjugated, set in order, and employed in Your dominions, in Your heavens, through Your command, power, and strength, and Your administration and direction. All those heavenly bodies glorify and exalt their single Creator, Who creates, spins, and administers them; through the tongue of disposition, they declare: “Glory be to God! God is Most Great!” Through all their glorifications, I too declare You holy.
O Omnipotent One of Glory, hidden in the intensity of His manifestation and concealed in the magnificence of His grandeur! O One of Absolute Power!
I have understood through the teaching of the All-Wise Qur’an and instruction of Your Most Noble Messenger (Peace and blessings be upon him) that just as the heavens and stars testify to your existence and unity, so with its clouds, lightning, thunder, winds, and rain, does the atmosphere testify to Your necessary existence and unity.
Yes, the lifeless, unconscious clouds sending the water of life, rain, to the assistance of needy living beings is only through Your mercy and wisdom; confused chance could in no way interfere. The most powerful of electricity, lightning, which alluding to its potentiality for lighting, encourages man to benefit from it and spectacularly lights up Your power in space. The thunder announces the coming of rain, causing boundless space to speak, and makes the heavens ring out with the reverberations of its glorifying; it hallows You verbally, testifying to Your dominicality. The winds, which are charged with numerous duties like providing the sustenance most vital for animate creatures, and the easiest to benefit from, and ensuring and facilitating respiration, for some purpose turn the atmosphere into a ‘tablet for writing and erasing,’ thus pointing to the activity of Your power and testifying to Your existence. Similarly, the mercy milked through Your compassion from the clouds and sent to living beings, testifies through the words of its balanced, orderly droplets, to the breadth of Your mercy and compassion.