Eternal Words Nahj al-Balaghah Sermons SERMON 113 - About the World and its People
SERMON 113 - About the World and its People
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I warn you of the world for it is the abode of the unsteady. It is not a house for foraging. It has decorated itself with deception and deceives with its decoration. It is a house which is low before Allah. So He has mixed its lawful with its unlawful, its good with its evil, its life with its death and its sweetness with its bitterness. Allah has not kept it clear for His lovers, nor has He been niggardly with it towards His foes. Its good is sparing. Its evil is ready at hand. Its collection will dwindle away. Its authority will be snatched away. Its habitation will face desolation. What is the good of a house which falls down like fallen construction or what (Existent) good is there in an age which expires as the provision exhausts, or of time which passes like walking?
Include whatever Allah has made obligatory on you in your demands. Ask from Him fulfillment of what He has asked you to do. Make your ears hear the call of death before you are called by death. Surely the hearts of the abstemious weep in this world even though they may(apparently) laugh and their grief increases even though they appear happy. Their hatred for themselves is much even though they may be envied for the subsistence they are allowed. Remembrance of death has disappeared from your hearts while false hopes are present in you. So this world has mastered you more than the next world and the immediate end (of this world) has removed you away from the remote one (of the next life). You are brethren in the religion of Allah. Dirty natures and bad conscience have caused separation (disunity) among you. As a consequence you do not bear one another’s burdens, nor do you advise each other, nor spend on each other, nor do you love one another.
What is your condition? You feel satisfied with what little you have secured from this world while much of the next world of which you have been deprived does not grieve you. The little of this world which you lose pains you so much so that it becomes apparent in your faces and in the lack of your endurance over whatever is taken away from you; as though this world is your permanent abode and as though its wealth will stay with you for good. Nothing prevents anyone among you to disclose to his comrade the shortcomings he is afraid of, except the fear that the comrade will also disclose to him similar defects. You have been deceived together on leaving the next world and loving this world. Your religion has become just licking with the tongue. It is like the work of one who has finished his job and secured satisfaction of his master.
