I seek refuge in God from the accursed Satan. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, and may God's blessings be upon Muhammad and his pure progeny.
Our master, may God protect him, used to say that man makes two mistakes concerning time.
The first mistake: He is one thing, and time is another.
The second mistake: He is constant, and time is transient.
Meaning, we think Saturday came and went, Sunday came and went, Monday came and went. We set ourselves aside and attribute the "going" to time. We think we are stationary, and time is what passes. He used to say that this is a mistake.
Pay attention to this narration from Imam Hussain (peace be upon him). He used to narrate this. The narration shows that the person who narrated it, meaning Imam Hussain (peace be upon him), was beyond mystics, beyond philosophers. It is completely understood from the narration that its speaker was a superhuman being. The narration is very beautiful. He says: "O son of Adam, you are nothing but a collection of days." How beautiful this narration is. O son of Adam, it is nothing other than you yourself who are time. "Whenever a day passes, a part of you is gone." With each day that passes, it is you who has passed. It is you who is melting away. It is you who is coming to an end. We are like a candle. From the moment of birth when we are lit, this candle gets smaller and smaller, constantly melting away. It is perpetually in decline. Eventually, one day it will end.
Amir al-Mu'minin, Imam Ali (peace be upon him), said: "Indeed, your moments are the parts of your life." These times are the components of your life. Meaning, as time passes, it is your life that is passing. "So do not spend any of your time except in that which will bring you salvation." Waste no time unless you spend it on a path that leads to your salvation.
Again, Amir al-Mu'minin (peace be upon him) said: "Indeed, your life is the number of your breaths." Your life is according to the number of your breaths. "And over them is a guardian who counts them." God has appointed someone to count your breaths, and when they are finished, he will announce it is over. We will not draw a single extra breath.
So, we are a candle, and we are melting and heading towards demise. Until now, we have lost a great deal of time, and we do not know how much of our life is left. Perhaps it is tomorrow, perhaps a week, perhaps another month, a few more months, another year, a few more years. In any case, the remaining time is very short. In the blink of an eye, we will lose that remaining time as well.
But what does Satan do? He whispers to us. He says, "You are healthy; you haven't been sick until now, so you will be healthy from now on. You are young, so you will remain young." What conclusion does he want us to draw? That for now, there is no news of the end. So, what should we say to Satan? We should say that health is not permanent. It's possible that I have been healthy until now, but I do not know about my tomorrow. If you visit hospitals, you will see that illness knows no age. From children to old men and women, many are in the hospital, bedridden and sick. And if we are young, this youth is not eternal; one day it will be taken from us. And another point is that, well, even assuming I am healthy and young, many who have passed away were both healthy and young. We truly do not know what our tomorrow holds.
Amir al-Mu'minin (peace be upon him) said: "Do not be deceived by the health of your body and the well-being of your yesterday." Do not let the health of your body and the wellness of your past deceive you. "For the duration of life is short." Life is very short. "And the (perpetual) health of the body is impossible." It is impossible for someone's body to always be healthy. After all, how many thousands of brain diseases, eye diseases, ear diseases, heart diseases, kidney and liver diseases do we have now? We may not have contracted such diseases so far, but it is inevitable that some of these millions of diseases will come for us.
So, considering these points, it becomes clear that the remaining period of our life is a golden and extremely precious opportunity. A price cannot be put on it. Amir al-Mu'minin (peace be upon him) said: "The remainder of a person's life is priceless." There is no price that can be set for the remainder of a person's life. The Imam also said: "Nothing is more precious than red sulfur (a metaphor for something extremely rare and valuable) except the remaining lifetime of a believer." And he said: "No one knows the value of the remainder of his life except a prophet or a truly righteous person (siddiq)." The remaining time of life is so valuable, so valuable, that it takes a prophet or a righteous person to understand its worth. The Imam also said: "If you were to take a lesson from what you wasted of your past life, you would surely protect what remains."
It is narrated from Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him) that he said: "There is nothing in this world more precious than your heart and your time."
It is narrated from Mulla Ahmad Naraqi (may God have mercy on him), the author of Mi'raj as-Sa'adah (The Ascension of the Pious), who said: "Every breath of life is a precious jewel for which there is no substitute. And what jewel is more precious than that which can lead a person to eternal sovereignty and everlasting kingship?" This means that in the remainder of our lives, we must strive; we can even attain kingship if we know the value of this remaining time. He said it is narrated that when a servant's time of death arrives and the Angel of Death comes to him and informs him that no more than an hour of his life remains, at that moment—by "hour" he means a moment—such grief, regret, and sorrow will befall that servant that if he owned the entire kingdom of the earth from east to west, he would give it all in exchange for one more hour, meaning one more moment, to be added to his life, so that perhaps in that moment he could compensate for the past, but he finds no way to do so. He wishes for one more moment to be added to his life, but it is not added.
So, I will recite a verse from Rumi (Molavi) and a verse from Sheikh Baha'i (may God have mercy on him). Their poems are very beautiful.
Rumi says:
God granted a life, of which each day's
value is known by none but Him.
And it is narrated from the late Sheikh Baha'i that he said:
O' wise one, that which has no substitute
Is your precious life; consider it a treasure.
And peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings.
