Thunder is often more vivid than lightning

One of often wonders what Allah meant behind the lightning and thunder of that famous verse of Surah al-Ra’ad:

“He shows us Lightning to inspire within us fear and hope and brings the heavy clouds; And the Thunder proclaims His praise…” (Surah al-Ra’ad:11–12).

Lightning is bright, blinding; it occurs in a flash, as if almost defying time. One catches it, but merely a glimpse; so fast, one can only remember it, sitting in the memory as a faint intuition. But it is an intuition whose impact could perhaps not be more real. It leaves behind pure heat and shock, burning whatever it touches to ash. It is the most manifest display of Allah’s Might in the dunya.

Thus, the lightning of Truth strikes the heart of the believer. The disbeliever is the one who says he didn’t see it, even though he felt it. Defibrillation doesn’t work on an insulated heart; it only burns the patient.

But it is its sound — the thunder — that praises Allah. Sound so penetrating one cannot escape it by covering his ears. Perhaps this sound is the Divine Word (here, I remember a certain khutba: “the world is the Quran, and the Quran is its reciter.”) The lightning is His Amr (divine command), but it is so fast that the only thing our senses can truly register are its crackles. Indeed, one could say that the roar of thunder is more vivid than even the sight of lightning. So too is the Quran. It probes us to recall what we see visually in virgin nature by the Recited Word, whose evocative enunciations and primordial sounds (e.g. the Broken Letters) stagger our hearts. It aids us to remember our intuitions. The crackling of thunder — it reminds me of the Qalqalah of the Qaf (barq — Arabic for lightning). The reverberations remain in the heart long after the flash.

But do not be mistaken: the heart of the Muslim runs the greatest risk of an arrhythmia.