Death will overtake everybody; no one can escape
from it. But death is not the same for everyone.
Some have made God their goal in life; they speak
and keep silence for His sake alone; their attention
is focused entirely on the after-life. Death is for
them the end of a long terrestrial journey towards
their Lord.
Others have forgotten their Lord; they do not do
things for God’s sake; they are travelling away from
their Lord. They are like rebels who roam at large
for a few days, and then death seizes them and
brings them to justice.
Death is not the same for both types of people as it
might seem. For one, death is to partake of the
Lord’s hospitality; for the other, it is to be cast into
His dungeon. For one, death is the gate to paradise;
for the other it will be the day when he is thrown
into hell’s raging fire, to burn there forever as a
punishment for his rebelliousness.
Believers have a different attitude to death from
unbelievers. They are concerned with what comes
in the wake of death; they focus their attention on
gaining an honorable position in the life after death.
Unbelievers, on the other hand, are caught up on
worldly affairs. Their ultimate ambition is worldly
honour and prestige. Under present circumstances,
those who have consolidated their position on earth
seem to be successful, but death will shatter this
facade. It will become clear that those who seemed
to have no base in the world were in fact standing
on the most solid of foundations, while the position
of those who had reached a high status in the world
will be exposed as false. Death will obliterate
everything; afterwards only that which has some
worth in the after-life will remain. We are obsessed
with the world which meets our eyes. We fail to pay
attention to the call of truth. If we were to see the
next life with our worldly vision, we would
immediately submit to God. We would realize that
if we do not submit to Him today, we will have to
do so in the future world, when submission will
profit no one.
Ref - The Way to Find God
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
