After having prayed Isha with my parents one night, I picked up the Qur’an while my parents were still praying near me. I opened the mus’haf and the first ayah I read is ayah 15 of Surah Al Ahqaf.
The verse begins:
And We have enjoined upon man to do good to his parents. His mother carried him with difficulty and delivered him with difficulty. And his carrying and his weaning is (in) thirty months…
As I saw my parents praying around me, I felt the verse speaking directly to me.
The verse continues:
…until when he attains his maturity and reaches forty years, he says…
At forty years of age, this verse really resonated with me and it felt like the verse was definitely speaking to me. I read on and the verse leaves me with a beautiful du’a to make for my family:
“My Lord, grant me that I offer gratitude for the favour You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and that I do righteous deeds that You like. And set righteousness, for my sake, in my progeny. Of course, I repent to you, and truly I am one of those who submit to You.”
I had to immediately look up the tafsir of Abu Su’ud – my go-to tafsir whenever I am curious about a verse, especially its linguistic construction. And you can always count on Abu Su’ud to draw attention to the literary excellence of the verses without being too verbose:
وَوَصَّيْنَا الإنسان﴾ بأنْ يُحسنَ ﴿بوالديه إحسانا﴾ وقرئ حُسْنًا أي بأنْ يفعلَ بهمَا حُسْنًا أي فعلًا ذَا حُسنٍ أو كأنَّه في ذاتِه نفسُ الحسنِ لفرطِ حُسنهِ
While the translation says “to do good”, the verb is not explicit in the verse. So, the shaykh al-Islam brings out the implicit verb يُحسنَ (to do good or act graciously) which makes إحسانا maf’ul mutlaq. For those not familiar with it, you can think of maf’ul mutlaq as an adverb, used in this case for emphasis i.e. “We have enjoined upon man to really, really do good or act graciously towards his parents.”
The shaykh then mentions that in a different qira’ah the word used is حُسْنًا instead of إحسانا.
Ihsan is to act with good conduct. But husn is goodness or beauty itself. Now the meaning becomes even more profound. As the shaykh explains, what is meant by husn in this verse is actions that possess the quality of husn or beauty, because husn is an attribute. But the eloquent expression of the verse indicates that our actions towards our parents ought to be so excessively brimming with husn that beauty no longer remains merely an attribute, but rather becomes part of the essence of our conduct towards our parents.
Reflecting on the ayah I realised how terribly short I fall of the standard set by the Qur’an in relation to how we are meant to treat our parents.
“My Lord, be merciful to them as they have brought me up in my childhood.”
Al-Isra, 24
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Qur'anic Reflections 
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