Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Sermons
Sermon
224

SERMON 224

Transience of the world and the
helplessness of those in graves

This is a house
surrounded by calamities and well-known for deceitfulness. Its
conditions do not last and those who inhabit it do not remain
safe. Its conditions are variable and its ways changing. Life in
it is blameworthy and safety in it is non-existent. Yet its people
are targets; it strikes them with its arrows and destroys them
through death.

Know, O' creatures of
Allah, that, certainly, you and all the things of this world that
you have are (treading) on the lines of those (who were) before
you. They were of longer ages, had more populated houses and were
of more lasting traces. Their voices have become silent, their
movements have become stationary, their bodies have become rotten,
their houses have become empty and their traces have been
obliterated. Their magnificent places and spread-out carpets were
changed to stones, laid-in-blocks and cave-like dug out graves
whose very foundation is based on ruins and whose construction has
been made with soil. Their positions are contiguous, but those
settled in them are like far flung strangers. They are among the
people of their area but feel lonely, and they are free from work
but still engaged (in activity). They feel no attachment with
homelands nor do they keep contact among themselves like
neighbours despite nearness of neighbourhood and priority of
abodes. And how can they meet each other when decay has ground
them with its chest, and stones and earth have eaten them.

It is as though you
too have gone where they have gone, the same sleeping place has
caught you and the same place has detained you. What will then be
your position when your affairs reach their end and graves are
turned upside down (to throw out the dead)?
There shall every soul
realise what it hath sent before, and they shall be brought back
to Allah, their true Lord, and what they did fabricate (the
false deities) will vanish (away) from them. (Qur'an, 10:30)