Getting Prepared for Death

This world is a place where man is being trained. God charged man with many responsibilities in this world and informed him about the limits He has set for him. Provided that man observes these limits, complies with His orders and avoids prohibited acts, he will attain personal maturity and a better state of wisdom and awareness. With such attributes, a believer shows inexhaustible patience no matter what befalls him; he turns only to God and seeks help only from Him. These are the ways to revere God and to feel an inner submission to and an unbounded faith in Him. Realising the actual worth of favours bestowed by God, he expresses a deeper gratefulness to God and feels closer to Him. Consequently, he becomes an ideal believer endowed with the superior attributes of wisdom and morality. Furthermore, he becomes the type of person deserving to attain paradise, a place of perfection. But if man receives no education in the realities of the world, he fails to evince excellence of behaviour and, even when best situated from the material point of view, remains prone to all forms of failures.

Indeed, the Prophet Adam was sent to the earth to receive due training and was put to the test purposefully devised by God to prepare him for his eternal life. In the end, he became a distinguished person of superior morality and character highly praised in the Qur'an.

Man continues to be tested by countless events befalling him; his success in dealing with them earns him rewards in his eternal life, while his failure earns him punishment. Nobody knows when his period of testing will be over. In the words of the Qur'an, "the term of every life is fixed." (Surah Al 'Imran: 145) This term can sometimes be long, but can also sometimes be short. The truth is, however, that even the period we regard as being long rarely extends beyond 7 or 8 decades.

That is why, rather than engage in making long-term plans, man has to be guided by the Qur'an and live by its principles, knowing that he will give an account of all his deeds in the Hereafter. Otherwise, failure to prepare oneself for the eternal life, missing the one and only opportunity granted for this purpose, and deserving hell for all eternity will be a painful situation indeed. It should never be forgotten that, the only destination of someone who is deprived of paradise forever is nowhere else but hell. That is why, every moment spent in vain in this world is a great loss and a giant step taken towards an atrocious end.

Since this is so, this fact should take precedence over everything else in this world. Just as we prepare ourselves for the possible situations which we will confront in the course of our lives, we need to devote similar and even greater efforts, to becoming prepared for the next life. That is because the one who will die will be us. We will experience everything which will happen after death all alone. Therefore, this subject directly concerns "us", in other words, "ourselves". To those seeking eternal salvation, God commands the following:

You who have faith! Have fear of God and let each self look to what it has sent forward for tomorrow. Have fear of God. God is aware of what you do. Do not be like those who have forgotten God, so that He has made them forget themselves. Such people are evil-doers. (Surat al-Hashr: 18-19)