Image by Samer Chidiac from Pixabay
This is a tender, intimate Surah addressed to ‘You, Prophet … enfolded in your cloak’ (v.1). The heart of the religion is prayer — listening, remembering (reciting God’s Name, try it!) and communicating, or as we say in the Christian tradition, communing with God. When the religion/practice of Islam is described in the Quran it often talks of ‘maintaining the prayers’. This is a reminder (and Islam is a reminder too) that the five daily prayers are just the beginning, the night prayer is a special time between the believer and God — ‘night prayer makes a deeper impression and sharpens words’ (v.6).
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