and is angered by acts of disobedience. The angels ascend with His command to Him and descend with His command from Him.

Should you wish to grasp more fully this highest description, then imagine (1) that the combined strength of every creature were concentrated in a single one of them, and that all of them possessed the power of that single being; if you then set their power beside the power of the Lord—exalted is He—you would find absolutely no comparison, just as there is no comparison between the might of a mosquito and that of a lion.

Next, suppose that all the knowledge of created beings were gathered in one man, and then everyone enjoyed that same measure of knowledge; their knowledge, set against His knowledge, would be like the beak-full a sparrow takes from the ocean. And if you imagined all the wisdom of the creatures on that scale, it would still bear no proportion whatsoever to His wisdom.

Likewise, if you pictured every speck of beauty in existence assembled in a single person, and then all creation shared that beauty, its relation to the beauty and majesty of the Lord would be less than that of a feeble lamp to (2) the blazing disc of the sun.

Allah—glorified be He—has alerted us to this meaning in His words: “If all the trees on earth were pens and the sea—reinforced by seven more seas—were ink, the words of Allah would not be exhausted. Truly, Allah is Almighty, All-Wise.” (Surah Luqman 31:27)

So imagine the encircling ocean of the world as ink, with seven further oceans surrounding it, all of them ink with which (3) the words of Allah are written; the seas would run dry and the pens—made from every tree on earth from its creation to the end of time—would be spent, yet the words of Allah would still remain inexhaustible.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) also said: “The seven heavens, in comparison to the Kursi, are like a ring thrown…"