Friday, December 14, 2007

The Beginning Of Guidance


"You should not neglect your time or use it haphazardly; on the contrary you should bring yourself to account, structure your litanies and other practices during each day and night, and assign to each period a fixed and specific function. This is how to bring out the spiritual blessing (barakah) in each period.

But if you leave yourself adrift, aimlessly wandering as cattles do, not knowing how to occupy yourself at every moment, your time will be lost. It is nothing other than your life, and your life is the capital that you make use of to reach perpetual felicity in the proximity of God, the Exalted.

Each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, since each of them is irreplaceable and, once gone, can never be retrieved. Do not be like that deceived fools who are joyous because each day their wealth increases while their life shortens. What good is an increase in wealth when life grows ever shorter?

Therefore be joyous only for an increase in knowledge or in good works, for they are your two companions who will accompany you in your grave when your family, wealth, children and friends stay behind."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Appreciation of time is really very difficult because I think I am easily swayed away. Secondly, I would "reward" myself from "hardwork" by taking it easy and let time pass me by. May Allah guide me to something better.

To me surah al-Asr summarized it all. We are at constant lost because we will never recover time every second it passes us by unless as mentioned in the surah.

Another interesting thing, again the mention of a person who reminds others because all of us will tend to 'slack'....

TheHoopoe said...

We all fall into these lapses all the time.

Some of us realise this and try to better ourselves the next round. Alhamdulillah.

Most of us are oblivious. May Allah makes us more conscious of Him.

So, the concept of reminding is indeed important in humanity and in Islam. That's the universal message in al-'Asr

Wallahu'alam