Created Before You Were Anything

Self-Reflection & Islamic Meditation Series

When I build something, I start from scratch. Raw materials. Research. Trial and error. If it’s software, I write code, see what it does, fix what broke, and try again. Slowly, version by version, it gets better. But it never becomes perfect. It never really does.

That gap — the space between what I made and what it could still be — is always there. Human creation always leaves room for improvement.

Subhanallah.

Now think about what Allah creates. There is no prototype. No iteration. No version two. He creates, and what comes into being is whole, complete, and precisely what it needs to be. Not because He got lucky on the first attempt — but because His creation is of an entirely different order. And we are not capable of improving on it. We can only observe.

Nowhere does this feel more real to me than when I think about a single sperm.

It is almost invisible. Unimaginably small. And yet, when placed in the right conditions — when Allah wills — out of that one tiny cell, an entire human being begins to form. A human with a heartbeat. With fingerprints. With a face.

Allah describes this process Himself:

“And certainly did We create man from an extract of clay. Then We placed him as a sperm-drop in a firm lodging. Then We made the sperm-drop into a clinging clot, and We made the clot into a lump of flesh, and We made the lump into bones, and We covered the bones with flesh; then We developed him into another creation.”— Surah Al-Mu’minun, 23:12–14

He made the bones first. Then the flesh came after. Every step has its order. Every step is precise.

Allahu Akbar.

And there is something else that stays with me. When a baby is born, they arrive with more bones than an adult. Babies have extra bones — small, soft, flexible — that support the growth their body is about to go through. Over time, some of those bones fuse. Some disappear entirely. The body knows exactly when, and exactly how.

We did not design that. We cannot replicate it. We cannot improve it.

What we can do — all we can do — is hold the baby gently, make sure they are fed, keep them warm, and get out of the way. The growth happens on its own. Allah created the process, and the process runs exactly as He intended.

That thought is humbling. It tells me something important: I am not the author of life. I am a caretaker at best.

So what does it mean to you — that before you were anything at all, Allah had already written every stage of your becoming?