(27–28) “O you who believe, do not betray Allah and the Messenger, nor knowingly betray your trusts. * And know that your wealth and your children are but a trial, and that with Allah is a great reward.”

Allah Most High commands His believing servants to fulfill what He has entrusted to them of His commands and prohibitions. Allah offered the Trust to the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, but they refused to bear it and were fearful of it; yet man undertook it. Indeed, he has always been deeply unjust and ignorant. Whoever fulfills the trust deserves an abundant reward from Allah, while whoever fails to fulfill it and instead betrays it deserves a grievous punishment. He thereby betrays Allah and the Messenger and violates his trust, debasing himself by becoming marked by the vilest qualities and ugliest traits—namely, betrayal—and depriving himself of the most perfect and complete of qualities—namely, trustworthiness.

Since a servant is tested through his wealth and children, his love (1) for them may lead him to give precedence to his own desires over fulfilling his trust. Allah Most High therefore states that wealth and children are a trial through which He tests His servants, and that they are merely a loan that must be handed back to the One who gave it and returned to the One who entrusted it: “And that with Allah is a great reward.”

If you possess reason and sound judgment, then prefer His immense bounty over a fleeting, paltry pleasure destined to vanish. A rational person weighs things against one another and gives preference to what is most worthy of being preferred and precedence to what is most deserving of being put first.