Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

kabbirhā takbur ṣaghghirhā taṣghur
—make something big
and it becomes a big deal; make something small, it becomes a small thing. Well
you know what? This 
āyah
is about making 
ākhirah
big and making 
dunyā
small. That’s all it’s about! We’re going to go through life, we’re going to have
careers, we’re going to have educational accomplishments, we’re going to have
challenges, all of those things are going to be there. But, you know what? These
are all temporary. These are all temporary.
One day will come, there will be a congregation, they’re going to make 
ṣalāh
and they’re going to make an announcement that there’s a 
janāzah
and it’s going
to be mine; and it’s going to be yours. It’s going to happen. People are going to
pray over us and then we’re going to be gone. And it’s sooner rather than later, I
mean quite a bit of our life has already passed us by. So it’s not like we are
getting further away from that day, we’re only getting closer. So the sooner we
internalize that, whatever Allah has is better—because we’re heading towards it
anyway—we’re just doing ourselves a favour. If we could just learn to utilize
our time in the right way. We make ten-year plans and fifteen-year plans, yet we
don’t think about the 
ākhirah
.

---

Then, how do you think about the 
ākhirah
? How do you practically plan for
the 
ākhirah
? You don’t make a ten-year plan, you don’t make a fifteen-year plan
for the 
ākhirah
—you make a daily plan. It’s not about making long term goals;
it’s about how did you spend today? What are you going to do after Jumuʿah?
How are you going to spend tomorrow? When are you going to wake up? What
are you going to do with your free time? When are you going to erase those
useless games off your phone? When are you going to stop watching so much
TV? When are you going to stop? When are you going to stop wasting time just
chatting away or trolling? When are you going to stop? When are you, going to
hold yourself, to a higher standard, if not today? If you don’t make that change
in your day— how you go to sleep, how you wake up, what you say and what
you do, especially how you spend, what you think is, free time? Because it’s not
free—you’re not paying for it now but you and I will be paying for it with Allah.
We will be paying for it. There is a price. We may not realize we’re going to be
paying for it, but it’s on record.
You know how people feel relaxed when they are off the clock, when they
punch out of the office. Well we’re constantly on the clock with these angels.
They don’t take a break, and when they do they put the alternatives on shift. So
that plan has to be made for our day; and 
in shā
’
 Allāh taʿālā
, Friday is a great
day to start new habits. Friday is a great day for introspection. We take extra
time out for 
ʿibādah
anyway; we take extra time out to get ready to meet Allah
anyway on this day. Allah already enables us to become spiritually more
powerful, more strengthened, this day than other days. So why not make some
serious commitments to yourself? This is not for you to share with anyone else
—this is just you and yourself. You are, your worst critic, when it comes to this.
You and I have to decide how we are going to live our lives differently because,
wa-Llāhi
the moment we start saying, ‘I’m doing pretty good’, that ‘actually I
have nothing to change in my life, I’m set’—that delusion, it must be that so
many other people have given us that false sense of delusion. They’ve blinded us
for so long; they’ve poured so much dust in our eyes that now we can’t even see
who we are for ourselves.
I pray that Allah (