Allah’s blessings are infinite
“And if you should try to count the favors of Allah you could not enumerate them.” (Qur’an 14:34)
How can we count the blessings of an infinite God with a finite mind? As the teacher of Rumi, the mystic Shams Tabrizi said, “Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn’t take you into the house.”Despite all divinely sent prophets constantly calling mankind to not seek God solely with the mind, human beings have never stopped searching for a God they can touch and see directly. Islam does not ignore this inclination, but rather uses the same rational thought to challenge it. A mystic master was once asked, “How can I see God?" The master told the questioner, “Look at the sun.” The seeker looked towards the sun, but after a few seconds squinted in pain and said, “I can’t, it’s burning my eyes.” The master then replied, “You can’t even look at the sun without going blind and you want to see the Creator of the sun?” The seeker then asked, “Then tell me great master, where is God?” The masterasked the seeker, “Do you know where in the galaxy the Earth is orbiting in this moment? Do you even know where you are to ask where the One who created place resides? When we cannot even place ourselves relative to the Universe how can we attempt to place a formless God in relationship to an existence He completely transcends?” When our eyes cannot see themselves, or our teeth cannot bite themselves, when we cannot fully experience our own senses, how can we expect to be able to fully experience the One who created those senses?
The human mind will always venture to limit God's omnipresent, transcendent and mysterious nature into a form or formula that can be understood. Rumi metaphorically remarks on the inclination to limit God to the confines of human understanding through the following metaphorical poem: “The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”There are no images or idols in Islam so that man doesn't limit God to a form. Nonetheless, true monotheism is not just belief in a single God, but the ability to see a reflection of God in everything for everything is infused and animated through the love of God. The Qur’an speaks to God’s infinite and incomprehensible nature by declaring, “And if all the trees in the Earth were pens and the sea with seven more seas to help it were ink the words of Allah could not be exhausted. Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.” (31:27)