يَـٰبَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ خُذُوا۟ زِينَتَكُمْ عِندَ كُلِّ مَسْجِدٍ وَكُلُوا۟ وَٱشْرَبُوا۟ وَلَا تُسْرِفُوٓا۟ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلْمُسْرِفِينَ
O CHILDREN of Adam! take your adornments at every place of prostraiton; thus eat and drink but do not waste: verily, He does not love the wasteful
Three things:
First, without warrant, people sometimes refer to their need for food and drink, to take one example, as the need of their body, as an animal need, and eating and drinking as acts that do not bring me face to face with the divine, with a sustainer and compassionate provider. To think about food and drink is to think of mundane and lowly things. One is to have ‘higher’ interests. This is the unfounded bias of human beings. When something so essential to the soul (and only thus for the soul’s server, the body) as food and drink as sustenance, is diminished to some ‘animal’ or ‘vegetative’ part of the soul (the soul broken into parts without warrant and irrationally) or a bodily need, the most repeated and joyful actions (eating and drinking) no longer make me present to my sustainer. This is one thing. It is why a ‘naturalist’ worldview is so devastating to me. My pre-revelation way of describing my hunger and thirst is often such that i take these as bodily needs simply because the body is involved – sustenance is not experienced by the soul or mind (not usually or easily at least) without engaging/taking physical adornments (foods and drinks) and without using my body (hands, mouth, stomach and so on). Whatever adornment I take is lost once I have taken it. I am saddled with the burdens of eating and drinking. The Quran suggests I transgress and waste (and therefore suffer spiritually) when I do that with food and drink (and much else also).
Second, “taking the adornment at all places of prostration” is Quran’s re-description of what my relationship with anything I find beautiful and adorned/attractive can be. To take adornment at a ‘masjid’ is to see the adormment as God’s adornment (the following verse calls it as such – zeenat-Allah). The beauty i see and love is His if I receive it as someone who depends on Him for what he needs i.e. as his abd (most clearly food and drink but then also love and company/friends/family/fullfillment of a duty, caring for others, being cared for and so on). Prostration stands for the spiritual and mental posture of dependence on, and acknowledding that one is receiving from, the owner and posessor of all the beauties and adornments.
Third, beyond food and drink (but certainly including them as spiritual needs that one meets as a slave in prostration receiving a compassionate sustenance as a sign and news of His riches and providence and promise of provision without end) I find myself unable to simply take adornments such as the love I feel for my child, my child’s loving presence in my life, without wounding my soul unbearably. I stood at the closed door of my son’s room, listening to his laughter and talk as he plays games with his friends and thought to myself: in a few brief years, he will probably not be here anymore. He may leave for educaiton or work and eventually start his own family. There will be no one in the room. He will have his own life. I found a deep wound open in my soul, the part of my soul that experiences a beauty called love, a love for one’s child. I sat on the floor outside his room and wept. Nothing could stop this moment from passing. It will surely be the case that he will leave. This thought hurt every time I look at it and nothing could console me about the loss i see coming and, in a way, already feel. And so when I read in the Quran that at each place of prostration i.e. at each instance when I see or feel a beauty, i find it possible for me see my God’s beauty in my child, in my soul’s desire for our togetherness and to never be separated, in my love for him and enjoyment and joy in him being here with me. If i can take all these adornments in prostration, realizing my Lord owns these beauties and it is with Him that they exist eternally and they are here from Him and as His signs and that If I give these to Him, i can see His face, his beauty in my love and my desire and my adornments. In prostration to Him, I can take all these beauties and not lose them and not be wounded and killed by them. The wounds of trying to take adornments without prostration, without an etenral owner and source and sustainer of those adornments, convince me that I must take all of them them in (a place of) prostration. As i do, I preserve that beauty, i experience it as a portion of the real thing which is with the Beautiful One in all its fullness and eternity. I will probably not cease to weep at the thought of my child leaving home soon, but each such thought can be a masjid, a place of prostration. Each such place of prostration can be a place where I can take the adornment I yearn for and desire as love for my God’s adornment – as my love and need for God. As i surrender all adornment at each masjid to him, I live in His presence, I experience loving Him and I desire to be with Him (and thus al the treasures that are with Him) eternally.
The Quran as Revelation 