(S.O.S – ‘Saving Our Seconds’ Series – Part Two)
When any person goes to a shop to purchase something, he knows that there will be a price to pay. If the item is small and insignificant, such as a box of matches, it will be cheap. However, if it is an exquisite and rare ‘designer’ item, it will cost a considerably larger sum of money.
Hence, when Jannah is the ‘ultimate’ prize that any person could aspire for, we can well imagine the price one will have to pay to enter Jannah! In the case of Jannah, however, the difference is that Allah Ta‘ala Himself gives us the capital to purchase it. We don’t have to earn any capital – all we have to do is pay!
This capital is our ‘wealth’ of TIME. If we dedicate our time to Allah Ta‘ala, by worshipping Him, obeying Him and abstaining from that which displeases Him, we will be purchasing our Jannah. At every moment, we are receiving a small portion of the capital to purchase Jannah. The question is, “Will we use it to purchase Jannah or will we squander and waste it?”
If we have money in our purse and do not spend it, the money will remain in our purse, waiting to be spent another day. If we fail to spend our time in purchasing Jannah, those moments of time will be gone and will never come back. That is why the hadeeth explains that the sole regret of the people of Jannah will be the time that they allowed to pass by without them using it to please Allah Ta‘ala, thereby earning an even better Jannah. (Al-Mu’jamul Kabeer vol. 20, pg. 93)
Our lives are short, perhaps fifty, sixty, seventy or eighty years at the most. Very few people ever live to be a nonagenarian (person in his nineties). If we examine the reality, spending fifty years in the obedience of Allah Ta‘ala is undoubtedly a small price to pay to earn an eternity of bliss and ecstasy.