Seize Your Blessings: Act Before Life's Opportunities Fade

Opening Praises and Introduction

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. All praise is due to Allah, Who is All-Knowing, All-Powerful. And peace and blessings be upon our Master Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, who was sent by Allah as a witness, a bearer of glad tidings and a warner, and a caller to Allah, by His permission, and a shining lamp. And He warned us about the Day of Resurrection, the Day on which the soul will be lost or will be saved. And His companions and those who followed.

Allah Almighty said in His Glorious Book — after I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Shaytan, in the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful:

And He said:

And the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your busyness, and your life before your death."

The Purpose of Rasulullah's Mission

Before the advent of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, Mecca was plagued by a rot of nigh-inescapable evil. Its people were uncivil and they were wicked, and that led them to do evil and wicked things. Their entire lives were completely and utterly entrenched in ignorance, and they wasted away their lives in hedonistic indulgence — slowly losing their youth, their health, their riches, their free time, and their lives to the clutches of death.

And for these people of Mecca before Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him — and for that matter, the people of the world — life was extremely grim, even if only a few people could see it. But then Allah gave to these people a way out, a way that saved them from the clutching hooks which they were snagged on. And that way out was none other than our beloved Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him.

And we can sit here now and we can ruminate over the many hundreds of possible objectives — median objectives — with which Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, was sent. The most primary objective of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, would be the very objective which he himself, peace and blessings be upon him, stated. In a hadith narrated by Imam Ahmad, Imam Hakim, and Imam Bayhaqi, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, says:

"I was only ever sent to perfect the propensities of character." In other words, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, was sent with a single purpose in mind: to revitalize the character of the human being into one that took advantage of its propensities for good — one that took advantage of itself and the righteous characteristics within himself before it was too late.

But when to take advantage of these, and what specific qualities and righteous characteristics can we take advantage of? Well, in another beautiful, eloquently succinct hadith, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, gives us all of those moments of advantage. He says, in a hadith in Mustadrak al-Hakim:

The word اغتنم is a very beautiful word, because it doesn't just mean to take advantage. The word اغتنم comes from the Arabic word غنيمة, and غنيمة refers to the spoils of war. When one army defeats another, they get all the treasures, the assets of the other army — and that is called غنيمة. And so in this hadith, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, isn't just saying to take advantage of five before five — he is saying to treasure five before five.

And what are those five?

• شَبَابَكَ قَبْلَ هَرَمِكَ — Your youth before your old age
• وَصِحَّتَكَ قَبْلَ سَقَمِكَ — Your health before your sickness
• وَغِنَاكَ قَبْلَ فَقْرِكَ — Your riches before your poverty
• وَفَرَاغَكَ قَبْلَ شُغْلِكَ — Your free time before your busyness
• وَحَيَاتَكَ قَبْلَ مَوْتِكَ — And your life before your death

And inshallah, through this khutbah we'll go through each of these qualities and see what makes them such powerful, advantageous moments of good character, how we can make the most advantage of them, and why their negatives are so detrimental for a person who used to have their opposite. And we'll try and link them also to the Quran and Sunnah and different examples given therein, inshallah.

The First: Youth Before Old Age

So the first quality is youth — شَبَابَكَ قَبْلَ هَرَمِكَ — your youth before your old age.

And it should be of no doubt to anyone that youth is the pinnacle of a person's life. In youth, a person is stronger, more energetic, and he has more opportunities to accomplish — in fact — the rest of those four things in the hadith. In youth, a person is more healthy. In youth, a person is better at attaining wealth. In youth, a person has more free time. And in youth, a person has a lot more life ahead of them than when they're in old age.

So perhaps that is one wisdom why Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, begins with this aspect — the element of youth — because youth is something everyone grows up in, and it's a time in a person's life when they have the most energy to do the most amount of worship for Allah.

On the other hand, the bane of youth is old age. Old age greatly reduces these. In old age, a person's health is often lesser. A person has less capability of attaining means. A person often doesn't have as much free time, or if they do, they're not able to take as much advantage of that free time. And in old age, a person is much closer to passing away.

So Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, therefore encouraged his believers, his followers, to pursue youth before it was too late. In a hadith in Musnad Abi Ya'la, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, says:

"Whoever's youth is safe and sound for him, he will have Jannah." Why is that? It's because the habits, the good characters, the inducements of youth — when they are consolidated within the period of youth — they continue into old age. Old age generally does not produce new habits except with extreme rigor and discipline. So when a person advances all of his good characteristics in youth towards his old age, then by the time he's in old age he still has all the youthful characteristics within him that he consolidated because of his youth.

And for this fact — this is why even if a person is older at this point in time, where a person is maybe out of the stage of his youth — but the fact that he still has that youthful consciousness of Allah, the fact that he still has that youthful engagement with worship, whether he's 40, whether he's 20, whether he's 16, whether he's 50, the fact that he's still able to think about Allah and worship Allah means that it's never too late for him. And it only becomes too late when Allah reduces a person back to that stage where they no longer have any consciousness whatsoever.

Allah says in the Quran:

Allah created you, and then He will take you back in full. But some of you He shall reduce to a most deplorable age, so that he knows nothing after having once known something. And Allah is omnipotent and all-knowing.

So when Allah says this, He's saying that until we lose that consciousness, there's still a level of life and exuberance within a person — whether he's in the stage of what is predominantly called youth, or he's older. As long as that youthful consciousness of Allah remains, it's never too late for any of us. But once that youthful consciousness leaves — and then for people who are actually in their youth, they lose their young age — it becomes a lot harder to worship Allah.

So taking advantage of your youth, making a schedule for yourself — a schedule of when you're going to work and when you're going to take breaks — schedules not just for your normal school work, your job, your career, but also schedules for your worship: when am I going to pray this? When am I going to pray that? That is an extremely powerful way of taking advantage of your youth before your old age. And staying constant on that, staying particular on that, only greatly and exponentially increases itself in old age, as a simple fact of life.

And when we look in Surah al-Kahf, the first quality Allah commends the people of the cave for was not the fact that they believed — but it was the fact that they were youth who believed:

"We will most surely tell you their story in full, in truth. Indeed they were youth who believed in their Lord." It was because of the fact that they took advantage of their young age that they were able to escape a tyrant. If they had been old, it would have been much more difficult for them to have done something like that. So Allah isn't praising these people for their young age — He's praising them for taking advantage of all within their young age.

The Second: Health Before Sickness

The second quality is وَصِحَّتَكَ قَبْلَ سَقَمِكَ — your health before your sickness. In a hadith, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, describes health as a bounty in which many people are deceived. And why is that?

The reason is because even more than youth, health is just a simple fact of life. It's a default of the human body — to the extent that we forget to even expect it to be a default of the human body. It's just so ubiquitous that it pervades both youth and old age. A youthful person can be healthy; an old person can be healthy. And it's only when it's lost in both that it is truly appreciated.

And this Arabic saying applies to all these characteristics, but one famous Arabic proverb is: an-ni'matu idhā fuqidat 'urrifat — a blessing is only recognized when it is lost. And that applies nowhere more perhaps than health. Because a person in health has exponentially more capability than when he is sick. The moment he is sick, he is forced to lie on a bed for hours — he's bedridden, he's not able to do half as many things as he could when he was in health. And this is when we actually pray to Allah for health. Allah says in the Quran:

And when harm afflicts a human, then he calls to Allah on his side — or sitting or standing. But when We finally decide to remove his harm, he continues on as if We never afflicted him with any harm for which to call Us in the first place. Such has been how it has been ordained for the intemperate people.

So to avoid being intemperate, we have to take advantage of our health before it's replaced by sickness. And the best way to take advantage of our health is to remember Allah for our health while we are still healthy. Anyone can remember health when they're sick, but it takes a conscious person to remember health while they are healthy. That shows Allah that this is a servant of mine who is truly grateful, who is truly appreciative for this blessing of health — that even when there is no reason for us to remember health, he still does so anyway.

And there's a famous saying of Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, who said that we were tested with the fitna of hardship and we passed it — we hope to Allah. But then we were tested with the fitna of ease, and we were tested or not. And the reason Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, would say something like this is because sometimes the fitna of ease — the trial of ease — is so much more difficult than the trial of hardship. Because the trial of ease makes it extremely hard to remember Allah. The trial of hardship is by name hard, but it becomes easier to remember Allah within it. It's much more difficult within ease.

So remembering Allah in our health is one of the most beneficial and most powerful ways to take advantage of our health.

The Third: Wealth Before Poverty

Next we have غِنَاكَ قَبْلَ فَقْرِكَ — your wealth before your poverty. Wealth may not be a goal in and of itself — that much is clear. All of us know that the deen did not come to tell us to gain as much money as we can. But the fact of the matter remains, and Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, was a very moderate person — he knew that the best part was in their moderation. And so he understood that wealth keeps a person from begging; it keeps a person from being unable to devote any time to Allah, because they're just so focused on the next meal, the next clothing, the next place to stay.

In a hadith in al-Tabarani, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, says:

(al-Mu'jam al-Awsat, al-Tabarani)

"Poverty was just barely disbelief." Why is that? It's because poverty makes a man hateful — and hateful in the decree of Allah — and because of that he's unable to devote himself with contentment to Allah. And when he's unable to devote himself with contentment to Allah, then there's nothing left of Allah within him.

So taking advantage of the ability to acquire finances, to have riches and wealth, is itself a means of being a good worshipper of Allah, because it frees time. And at the same time, a person who does have that wealth, those finances, those riches, is not free from the dangers mentioned in this hadith — غِنَاكَ قَبْلَ فَقْرِكَ.

One way — just like with health — of taking advantage of your riches is being appreciative of them to Allah. And nowhere is this more typified than in Surah al-Kahf, with the man of two gardens, where this man had been given two gardens but he didn't attribute them to Allah, and he was just oppressing himself. He said:

"I don't think this will ever go away. And I don't think the Hour will ever occur either. And on the hypothetical I was returned to my Lord, I would find something much better waiting in substitute."

But his partner, his friend, his companion, did have an appreciation for Allah:

His partner looked to him and said: "Will you be an ingrate to the one who created you from dust, then from a sperm-drop, then made you into a man? But that is my Lord, and I will never associate partners with my Lord."

So this person — this person of two gardens — when he didn't appreciate Allah for the bounty of his two gardens, what does Allah say happened?

His garden was encompassed by the awesome power of Allah, and so he began to wring his hands for what he never even gave in the path of Allah.

So not appreciating the wealth Allah gives us will have a detriment to us if we don't appreciate it sooner than later. And nowhere is this more typified in theory than when Allah says — illustrating an example:

"And spend from what We have given you before death comes to one of you, and he says: My Lord, if You could only delay me for a brief moment so that I could give some charity and be from those who are pious." But Allah could never defer a person once their time has come.

The Fourth and Fifth: Free Time Before Busyness, and Life Before Death

And that leads us to our final two — taking advantage of free time before your busyness, and taking advantage of your life before your death.

Each of us has moments of free time, and taking advantage of that time to worship Allah, to do something that will allow us to worship Him better, is extremely important, extremely profound, and extremely volatile — because the moment that is lost, it never comes back. Even the most pious people on the Day of Judgment will be grey-haired because they feel like there are moments in their life where they didn't take advantage of.

And there's no free time that's more magnificent than life itself. And life is the whole reason — whether you're youthful or you're sick, whether you're healthy or whether you're in old age, whether you have riches or you have poverty, or whether you have free time or you're busy — all of those are properties that can only apply to life itself. And that is why life is such a powerful blessing from Allah. Taking advantage of that life, taking advantage of all these things, is of the utmost importance.

And I'll end off with this hadith of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, which is almost the exact same hadith, but it's a lot more reproachful in tone. He says:

(Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2306)

"What are any of you waiting for — except overwhelming riches, or poverty that makes you forget, or a corruptive sickness, or confounding, annihilating senility, or a sudden death, or the Dajjal — and the Dajjal is the evilest inevitable to wait for — or the Hour itself — and the Hour is all the more catastrophic and bitter."

Closing Du'a

We ask Allah to allow us to take advantage of our youth before our old age, our health before sickness, our riches before poverty. We ask Allah to keep us away from confounding senility that makes us forget, and from Dajjal and from the Sa'ah, and from all the other evil qualities that could be afflicted upon us. And we ask Him to allow us to always be appreciative for His blessings. Ameen.