THE
112THKHUTBAH AT AREA 10 JUMA’AH MASJID ABUJA, BY IMAM YAHYA GARBA
AL-YOLAWI, ON 24TH MAR 2017/ 25TH
J/AKHIR 1438 AFTER HIJRA
To proceed; My dear
respected brothers and sisters in Islam, today’s khutbah centered on the hadith
of the prophet (SAW): Take advantage of five (5) before five (5) things happen
to you.
Islam considers life-time
of person to
be a great valuable resource for him; thus believers are encouraged
to be conscious of their actions and in actions in this life. To achieve maximum benefit out of this life
one need to recognize its importance and organize it wisely. If human beings do not waste or abuse life
but rather perceive it as a blessing
from Allah SWT theywould have every chance and hope for success both in this life and in the
hereafter.
In nowadays and age,
nearly everyone is in the race to gain maximum and surpass others in
materialistic possessions (money and property). The present society has developed
so drastically around money-oriented increases that lead to almost lost of its values
and norms of goodness and morality. People have nearly ceased to differentiate
between the right and wrong and think of living this life to the fullest in
every respect. Allah SWT says “By time,indeed, mankind is in loss,Except for
those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to
truth and advised each other to patience. He also says: “Know that the life of
this world is but amusement and diversion and adornment and boasting to one
another and competition in increase of wealth and children - like the example
of a rain whose [resulting] plant growth pleases the farmers; then it dries and
you see it turned yellow; then it becomes [scattered] debris. And in the
Hereafter is severe punishment and forgiveness from Allah and approval. And
what is the worldly life except the enjoyment of delusion.Race toward
forgiveness from your Lord and a Garden whose width is like the width of the
heavens and earth, prepared for those who believed in Allah and His messengers.
That is the bounty of Allah which He gives to whom He wills, and Allah is the
possessor of great bounty”. Q 57:20
Islam teaches us that
your life passes quickly and can never return; it is irretrievable. It is also the most precious gift that
humankind possesses and can be taken from us at any given moment. Thus the messenger of Allah encourages us to
make best use of these five things before five things happen to us.
It was narrated from Ibn Abbas that the messenger of Allah (SAW) says: “Seize
the opportunity of five before five: your youth before your old age, your
health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free-time
before your preoccupation, and your life before your death.” Hakim,imam Ahamd and authenticated by
Al-Albani
The Prophet (SAW) is pointing out that these
five matters are very easy to get hold of, because they are treasures that
everyone possesses, but very few appreciate. What are these five things?
1: Take Advantage of
Your Youth Before Your Old Age
One of the things that
most people take for granted is their youth. Youthfulness is a time when a
person is most energetic; when he lays out the foundations for his future, and
when he plans his life. So, one has to take advantage of this time before the
time comes when that enthusiasm is either lost or greatly reduced. Therefore, the Prophet (SAW) is advising the
youth to seize this moment and take advantage of it. The youth should utilize
this energy for the sake of Allah by seeking knowledge, obtaining halal means
of sustenance, and worshipping Allah through acts that he or she might not be
able to do later on in life. When people lose their youth, they find it harder
to do these deeds which were easier to do at a younger age. Youth, here, does
not mean the concept of youth where youthfulness finishes after the age of
eighteen or nineteen. In the Islamic Shari’ah, a man's life has been divided
into a number of stages.Shabab or youthfulness, according to the strongest
opinions refers to the stage before reaching the age of forty. This is because
forty is the prime of life, when mental and physical capabilities have reached
a peak, and after that they start to decline.
2: Take Advantage of
Your Health, Before You Fall Sick
Secondly, we are
advised to take advantage of our good health before we are overcome with
illness or disability. What we often don’t realize is that our health is a
blessing from Allah. When we are in good health, we take it for granted and
don’t always appreciate what we have. It is only when we fall sick that we
realize what a great blessing we had and how we lost it by not doing as much as
we could have done. Everyone falls sick. There may come a time when we also
fall sick. Sometimes the sicknesses may be severe. So, the Prophet (SAW) is
reminding us that we do not know the time up to which we will enjoy the full
possession of our faculties, of our physical strength, and our mental
capacities. Therefore, we should take advantage of our good health before that
time comes when we may be deprived of it.
The Prophet (SAW) said:
“The majority of mankind does not appreciate two blessings: ‘health’ and ‘free
time.’ Alhamdulillah, we have been blessed with sound minds in sound bodies.
Look at someone who Allah has tested with blindness. It is a very severe test.
We have been blessed not just with eyesight, but with hearing, with limbs, with
energy, with vitality, and with countless other blessings. Should we not
appreciate these blessings from Allah (SWT)? Do we not realize how enormous the
blessing of health is? The Qur’an reminds us in Surat al-Nahl,“Any
blessing you have is from Allah. Then when harm touches you, it is to Him alone
you cry for help” (al-Nahl, 16:53).
The least we can do,
brothers and sisters, is to perform the fara’id or the mandatory actions such
as the five daily prayers, fasting in Ramadan, and going for Hajj. All these
modes of worship require physical exertion.
That is the least that we can do; the bare minimum. Of course, the more
one exerts, the better it is for him. So, this is the second of the five
matters: “Take advantage of your health before you fall sick.”
3: Take Advantage of Your Richness
Before Poverty
The third is to take
advantage of your wealth before you poverty. One day we might have much more
than we need, and the next day, we might not have anything. One day, a person
might have the best of jobs or the best of businesses; yet, the next day, something
happens and he does not have the job or the business, and loses all his sources
of income. So the wise person uses his wealth before he loses it. He invests
for his future.
As far as making
investments for worldly benefits is concerned, the non-believe and the Muslim are both same; they both do
that. Of course, we have to ensure that we have enough money for our family and
our children and ourselves, so that we don’t have to beg. But while investing
in the duniya, let us not forget that we also need to invest in the akhirah,
where we need to reap the benefits of our investments much more than we need in
this world. We need to invest for our
real future, our eternal life in the hereafter.
The Prophet (SAW) once
asked his companions, "Who amongst you loves his inheritors' money more
than his own money?" The Sahaba said, "O Messenger of Allah! All of
us love our own money more than we love the money of our inheritors. We guard
it and protect it more than the money of our inheritors.” Then the Prophet (SAW)
said, "Indeed, the money that you spend in charity is your money, and the
money that you leave behind is the money of your inheritors." So, this is
the third of the five matters: “take advantage of your wealth before your
poverty.”
4: Take Advantage of
Your Free Time Before You are preoccupied
The fourth blessing is
the free time (opportunity of doing something) that we have. In fact, it is a
great treasure that all of us have to some degree or the other. We must make
use of our free time before we become too busy or preoccupied. How much free time do we have and what do we
waste it on? Think about it. Think about the free time all of us have been
blessed with. Let us not waste our free time. Perhaps the greatest wasters of
time are television, smart phones,
social medias, games, bad friends and internet. I am not referring to the time which is
utilized in getting something useful and beneficial from these devices;
something which is productive, beneficial to you in this world and hereafter, What
I mean to say is that very often, we gain no benefit after being attached to
the TV or internet, face book, wathapp etc. for hours on end—benefit, neither
for this world, nor for the next. And we’ll be lucky if after wasting time, we
come out without committing any sin of watching lustful and obscene images or
listening to music or both.
When we have some free
time, we should take advantage of it. The greatest thing that we can do in this
free time is to engage in the remembrance and worship of Allah (SWT). And one
of the greatest acts of worship is to seek knowledge.
Spending free time
wisely does not necessarily mean engaging in religious activities only. One way
to spend time is to visit one another; visit the sick, for the sake of Allah
(SWT). Time could also be invested in helping others with the little
opportunity you have or by learning a
trade or skill that can benefit us and others in this world. In fact, all acts
done for the sake of Allah and to seek the pleasure of Allah are transformed
into acts of worship. Of course, there are religious deeds that need to be
done. Besides the compulsory ritual prayers, we should pray some nawafil prayers as well; a few sunnahs or the nawafil,
if not the continual (rawatib) sunnahs that the Prophet (SAW) used to pray.
Each one of us should also spend his time to recite Qur'an every day, even if it's
only for 1 hr or 30 mints.
5: Take Advantage of Your Life Before
Your Death
Brothers and sisters!
The last thing that we have been advised to take advantage of is our life
before our death. This summarizes it all. Every one of us has a life. That is
why we are here right now. And every one of us has to die. Every night when we
go to sleep, we enter a state where a part of our soul leaves us. When we wake
up, it is only because Allah has blessed us by returning back our souls; hence
granting us the opportunity to worship Him, to seek His forgiveness, and to do
some more good deeds before it is our last day on earth. Upon waking up in the
morning, the Prophet (SAW) used to say,
“Praise
be to Allah who gave me life after death, and to Him is the final return.”
Often we do not fully appreciate how great a blessing it is to be given another
chance. We become relaxed about death, and we don’t fully comprehend or
appreciate that at some point – and only Allah knows when – our life will be
taken away from us for good, leaving no second chance, no opportunity to make
up for the wrongs we have done, and there will be no turning back. We must not
forget what a blessing and mercy life is. We should value every moment of life,
and use it to our best advantage. This means that we should struggle to qualify
for Allah’s mercy and get rewarded with peace of heart in this world, and with Jannah in the next world.
Finally, good things
don’t just come to us. We have to strive for them, day in and day out. Whether
we are at school, at work, or raising a family, we have to excel in whatever we
do. We know that we have to work hard, and the harder we work, the better the
reward. Jannah is no exception to this. If we strive hard enough, Allah will
reward us with the ultimate prize of paradise insha’Allah. The Qur’an says“Man
receives only what he strives for” (al-Najm, 53:3).
Brothers and sisters!
The wise person is the one who strives to achieve the pleasure of Allah, places
his trust in Allah, and then expects the best from Allah. The foolish person is
the one who blindly follows his desires and then presumes that Allah will
reward him. May Allah (SWT) make us amongst those who are successful in both
worlds; Ameen.
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