Al Ibaad ur Rahman – 6 – Purpose

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, I remind myself and you that time is the most important asset that we have. Time is life itself. Time is so important that Allah SWT took an oath by time. Wallahasr in the linsanat of the fukus. Time is the only non-renewable resource that we have. Everything else can be renewed, not time. We had the longest life expectancy at birth. Then our clock started and it runs backwards. We literally don't know how much time we have left. Imam Shahbhai Ramantul Ali said two beautiful things. One, he said that time is a collection of breaths. When the last one is spent, that's it. And the other thing he said was that life is but an instant. Because Allah mentioned this thing, kam labis, labis na yawman, avadayo. Life is but an instant. Let it be an instant of obedience. And that's why it's very important to live life with a sense of purpose and urgency. To live thoughtfully with our goal always in mind. Unfortunately, we live in an environment where having fun, playing games, entertainment, watching movies, social media, shopping for things we don't need and all such stuff, all of this takes precedence over living thoughtfully and for a purpose. Many of you are parents of teenage children, of high school children. How many of you have asked your child, what is your ambition? What is your goal in life? Did you ever ask your child this question? The reason I'm asking is because when those children come to me and I ask them, they look blank. They look as if they're seeing stars. So how would you raise children who have no goal, no purpose? Go and do that. Ask your child, what is your goal? What is your ambition? What do you want to achieve in life? What's your purpose? And then take a deep breath. Because if a child turns around and says, daddy, what is your purpose? You better have an answer ready. Otherwise you won't look very good before them, right? To live without purpose is the life of animals. It's a life. Get up in the morning, eat some food, go to sleep. That's it. Day after day after day. And that's the whole problem that we have created a society which is so toxic that as an antidote to the toxicity of the society, we have created entertainment. Right? It's like saying I have, may Allah protect all of us from this, but I'm saying, supposing for example, I have severe migraines, headaches, and all I'm doing is taking handfuls of Tylenol. What would you say if I do that? You say, you're crazy. Go and see a neurologist. Go and see a doctor. What is wrong? Maybe you've got some brain tumor or something. This Tylenol is just taking care of some immediate symptom. Go and check what is wrong. Right? But what have we done in society? We created a toxic society. And instead of saying how can we solve this toxicity, how can we cure this tumor, how can we cure this cancer, we give placebos. We give painkillers. How does it help? Three hours in the movie, you get lost. They make nice movies. You get lost. You come back out. It's the same world. It is the same world. So that's why we have this great value for fun. Oh, at least we had fun. Really, I tell you, this is so tragic. It's unbelievable. We have been conditioned to believe that work and fun are two different things. That's why we talk about work-life balance. That's why we talk about I need time to relax. You need time to relax because your work stresses you. Why does your work stress you? Think about it. You need time to relax. Your work stresses you. Why does your work stress you? Think about that first. Somebody, when I was living here in 97, 98, somebody asked me, they said, can you look up the Zeera and the Hayat-ul-Sahaba and whatnot and see what was the entertainment of the time of the Misa Salaam, what were the fun things they used to do. There is one single account of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam running a race with his wife Aisha, Siddiqun al-Dilana. One time in his whole life. Rest of it, archery,