every kind. This entails disavowing any power or strength of one’s own and acknowledging that one has no power or strength except through Allah the Magnificent.

His words, “and free us from poverty”: affluence means being free of need, while poverty means having nothing in one’s possession. A poor person is one who possesses only part of what is sufficient for him, or nothing at all.

It is well known that debt and poverty are both a source of great distress that may keep a person awake and prevent him from sleeping. When the servant turns to Allah and asks Him—Glorified is He—for support and assistance, appealing to Him through those magnificent means, his soul becomes calm and reassured, and his heart finds rest and tranquility. This is because he has entrusted his affairs to the One in whose hand are the reins of all affairs and the keys of the heavens and the earth, and has sought refuge with the One whose command, when He wills something, is only to say to it, “Be,” and it is. How could the heart not be reassured when it has attached itself to One such as this?