Imagine intending to take a four hour drive to a city for a big event, but never leaving your house until two hours to the event.
Imagine setting out in time for the event but as you’re driving, you lift your foot up from the accelerator and the car gradually comes to a stop.
Imagine hitting the accelerator again and an hour later, you just park the car by the roadside and turn off the engine.
Thirty minutes later, you start the car again. This time, you sight a furniture store and decide to stop by and check it out.
On coming out after two hours of window shopping, you get a call that the event is over.
Now think about it this way:
The big event represents your repentance or something virtuous you intend to achieve.
The four hours represent how long you have left in this world but in this case, you don’t even know if you have that long.
The delay in your departure represents your procrastination because you think you have time.
The second and third incidents represent taking breaks for no reason. Perhaps you’re doing well in avoiding a sin and then you suddenly decide to indulge. Perhaps you’re on a hifdh journey and you just abandon the Qur’ān.
The store you stopped in represents distractions.
And lastly, the call represents your death, innā lillāhi wa innā ilaihi rāji’ūn.
Now compare this journey to that of a person who set out five hours to the big event. This person stopped by a petrol station and met a long queue but had to wait in order to top up on fuel. The person continues the journey and gets a flat tire, so another stop had to be made in order to fix that. Halfway through the journey, this traveler feels some rumbles in the stomach and tries to grab a quick lunch at a restaurant in sight to be able to push through the rest of the journey. On getting back into the car,
…the call comes in.
I’d get into the details, but this newsletter is getting a bit long. To cut it short, the empty tank, long queue, flat tire and hunger represent genuine struggles and relapses that we experience on our journeys to Allāh. This traveler clearly had the drive to make it for the big event in time even though the destination was not reached. Just like the man who had killed 99(+1) men and was forgiven because he had died on the path to repentance.1
We like to take baby steps, but someday the baby must walk. If it doesn’t, we know that there’s an issue somewhere. Spiritually, that issue is often in our hearts. We are not like the generation who instantly covered themselves upon hearing a verse on the hijāb2 and had their streets flooding with wine3 upon hearing the verse on its prohibition. It’s a whole journey for us in abandoning a sin or achieving something great, but how long are our journeys going to take?
Sahīh al-Bukhārī 3470, Sahīh Muslim 2766.
Sahīh al-Bukhārī 4758.
Sahīh Muslim 1578.
SubhanAllah, May Allah make it easy for us
Jazakillah Khayr for a much needed wake-up call. Allahumma Baarik 🤲🏽🧡