"The will of God Prevails"

Surah 105
In the name of God, Most compassionate, most merciful.

1. See you not how your Lord dealt with the Companions of the elephant?
2. Did he not make their treacherous plans go astray?
3. And he sent against them flights of birds
4. Striking them with stones of baked clay
5. Then did he make them like an empty field of stalks and straw (of which the corn) has been eaten up.

The Surah refers to an event around 570 CE when the Abysinnians tried to destroy the Kaba. Here the will of God prevents this from happening.

Today---with the ongoing conflict between Israel/Palestine --It is interesting to reflect on this verse along with the observations made by Abraham Lincoln during the American civil war.

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party---and yet, the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began, and having begun, he could give final victory to either side any day, yet the contest proceeds"

It seems to me that when the passionate desires for hate, revenge, power, and possession of territory are changed to the noble virtues of justice, compassion, mercy, recognition of our brotherhood and sharing our earth, then we will have learned the lesson that a better world will come about when we try to submit to God's will. For 60 years this contest has continued.