Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

Māl
doesn’t just
mean dollar bills, 
māl
means everything that the dollar bills got you. The
apartment, the vacation, the clothes, everything; this is all 
māl
. That’s what you
are obsessed with. You don’t even have to ask them. A young man picks me up
from the airport, he picks me up in his BMW and he says, ‘Yeah, just got it a
couple of years ago’. I didn’t ask. But that’s okay because you’re obsessed, I
understand. You have to let me know, but that’s cool because Allah tells us that
you are obsessed with that beautification of worldly life through wealth.
Then you meet older people and they may be driving a much more expensive
car; they don’t talk about their car they say, ‘My son, 
al-ḥamd li-Llah
, he’s
going to medschool. 
In shā
’
 Allāh
he’s going to be a doctor soon. My other son,
he’s memorizing Qur’an’. All old people do this to me, they talk about their
kids, because that’s their joy. These kids may not even be good kids to them,
they don’t even call them; but they’re still proud of them, they still bring them
up. ‘My son is doing this, 
mā shā
’
Allāh
, he’s done this, he’s a lawyer’, ‘He’s
doing pretty well, he’s doing his PhD’, etc. They are always taking pride in their
children. Even if their children aren’t in touch with them anymore because the
only beautiful thing left of you now is your children. Allah boiled the entire life
of a human being down—
al-māl wa-l-banūn zīnat al-ḥayāt al-dunyā
. What’s
interesting about the example before? Allah mentioned his 
māl
; the guy had a
garden and He also mentioned—
ana akthar minka mālan wa-waladan
—I have
children too. So, Allah says:
Al-māl wa-l-banūn zīnat al-ḥayāt al-dunyā, wa-l-bāqiyāṭ al-ṣāliḥāt khayrun
ʿinda Rabbika thawāban
— 
subḥān Allāh
. He says: and the things that last, the
few things that will last, that’s how you have to translate 
al-bāqiyāṭ
, this is a
plural that means little (
jamʿ qillah
), so in a simple English translation that
would mean, and the few things that are going to last—Allah is already telling us
children won’t last and money won’t last—let me tell you the very few things
that will last, what are they? 
Al-ṣāliḥāt
—the few good things that you did; the
few good deeds that you pulled off, that is what’s going to last.
Khayrun ʿinda Rabbika thawāban
—they are much better, in the company of
your Master, as far as compensation is concerned. There is a treasure in this
phrase: 
khayrun ʿinda Rabbika thawāban
. Number one: it’s better. Better for
whom? Better for you. But Allah even adds—
ʿinda Rabbika
—Allah says
because of those good deeds, not only are these good deeds better as far as Allah
is concerned, these good deeds will allow you to be 
literally
close to Allah.
Allah will put you with those that are close to Him in 
jannah
, and 
then
He will

---

pay you. Before He mentioned 
thawāb
, He mentioned 
ʿinda Rabbika
—He
mentioned His closeness first and the compensation second, as though the
closeness to Allah is a bigger reward than what we get in 
jannah
. What we get in
jannah
, the house, the luxury, the joys, the pleasures, the beauties of 
jannah
; all
of that is 
thawāb
but before 
thawāb
, let me tell you about