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As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil ‘alameen, was-salatu was-salamu ala Sharafi al-Anbiya’ wa al-Mursaleen, Muhammadin Rasulullah Sallallahu alayhi wa alihi wa sallam tasliman katsiran katsiran. My brothers and sisters.
If I ask you: among all the things you have, resources—whatever you call a resource—which is the most valuable resource? And why? If I ask you this question, “All the resources you have, which is the most valuable resource?” What will you say? Which is it? Time? Why do you say time? Because can’t get it back, right? The most valuable resource we have is time. The most valuable resource we have is time because it is non-renewable. It is non-renewable. We can’t get it back. What’s gone is gone. You can’t stockpile it. You can’t say, “I’ll keep this for tomorrow.” What you have, you have. What’s gone is gone. It’s never coming back. And it’s a reducing number. We had our maximum lifespan when we were born. We had our maximum lifespan when we were born. And then the clock is ticking. And then the clock is ticking backwards.
So every time you celebrate a birthday, so every time you celebrate a birthday—if you celebrate it in the normal sense, if you celebrate it in the normal sense—then you don’t understand what time is. Because what just happened is that one more year of your life got reduced. That one more year of your life got reduced. So what are you celebrating? Think about it. This is the most valuable resource. Now, in this most valuable resource, what is the most valuable resource? What is it that is most important? What is it that is most important? And that is prioritization. What do you prioritize? Because the reality of life and the reality—we talk about managing time—it’s an oxymoron; you cannot manage time. Nobody can manage time. Time is not in your control. Time is a function of the rotation and the revolution of the earth. You can’t change that. That’s moving at whatever speed it’s moving, thousand miles an hour. Yeah, thousand miles an hour. So how are you going to change that? So you cannot manage time. You can’t increase time, you can’t decrease time. If I say “manage time,” suppose if I tell you, “give me ten minutes more today.” Can you give me? You can’t give me. Nobody can give me.
What you can manage is your priorities. Is yourself, your activities: I will do this instead of that. Alhamdulillah, bismillah, I just think about this as I was coming down the stairs today.
So much—when you advise people or when I advise people—I tell them: start your day with tahajjud. Make tahajjud fardh on yourself. Pray tahajjud every single day. Then read one juz of Quran. Then come to the masjid for salatul fajr. People have—they want to do it. Alhamdulillah, they are good people. They want to please Allah. But they have a lot of difficulty doing it. They can’t get up in the morning. They set the alarm; the alarm goes off. They still sleep through the alarm. They are not evil. This is a physical problem for them. They can’t do it. They are struggling with it. Coming to the masjid is a problem for them. You might say why is it? Well, whatever reason. Even though they live next to the masjid, close to the masjid—it’s difficult for them. They can’t find themselves in the masjid. Alhamdulillah, Allah Ta’ala gave us all of this—at least for me, for free. There is no effort. Alhamdulillah.
How much of shukr must you make for this masjid? Allah, you gave me. There is nothing unique or remarkable for me or anyone. Alhamdulillah, all of us are sitting here after salatul fajr. Allah has given us the tawfiq and the ability to pray salatul fajr by jama’ah in the masjid. And then Allah has given us the tawfiq and the time to sit and listen to some zikr of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala and so on and so on. I mean, it’s not a big deal. You would have prayed and gone home. There is no compulsion in listening to this khatirah. You can go home. No problem, no fault on anyone who goes. But Alhamdulillah, Allah gave us this tawfiq. Gave us this time. You guys come from further away. May Allah bless him. He comes every single salah. Alhamdulillah, this is something to thank Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala for. So what we can manage is our priorities.
So now let me give you a small interesting exercise. And the exercise is: if you do it physically—you should actually do it physically when you go home—inshallah, take a piece of paper and sit with it. And first write down: “If I tell you, what are your aims and goals in life?” Right? As you sit here, write them down, whatever comes to your mind. And try to write that in order of priority. So what are my aims in life? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever. Right, write as many as you want. Then you say: supposing I now tell you that your life span is five years. This is 2026—five years from now, you will be dead. Now look at this list of priorities you just wrote down. Will you change anything in this? You got only five years. At the end of five years, gone. So this priority list—which you made just now—will you change any of those? Once you have done that, then you say: you have until tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning salatul fajr is your jaraza. Now what will happen to that list? Will it change? Will it still remain the same?
Now come to the final point. What did Rasool say about our life expectancy? He said in salah: when you make salam on the right, don’t think that you can make the salam complete it on your left. That’s a life expectancy statement. Right? What he is saying there: when you make salam on this side, don’t believe that I can actually make salam. Salam. Don’t even think that. That’s a life expectancy statement. So what then should be our priority? I am not saying trash everything. No priority. What will you do first? What is the most important? And then you go Alhamdulillah. If Allah gives us the opportunity to complete that, then we go to the next one. No problem. But what is the priority?
So after you do this exercise, then reflect on ourselves and say: given that this is the reality, this is the word of the Nabi, how am I leading my life today? This view of—you know, he was organizing my life—and this, it’s not difficult. It’s just a matter of how do I lead my life, focusing correctly and saying this is the actual reality. That’s the reason why when Rasool Allah in the hadith where he talked about the signs of the last days and all that, he said a time will come when the day will be like the week and the week will be like the month and the month like the day and so on so on. So he mentioned all this. They didn’t say if the day is like a whole week, you know how will we live our life and what will we eat. They said, “Ya Rasool Allah, how will we pray? What will be the times of salah?” Seems like a strange question today, right? First question, he is saying the time—time itself will change. Duration will change. Don’t go into the science of it. How will it change? Allah is Allah. If Allah wants to do it, He will do it. The one who created the earth will do what He wants to the earth. The question of the Sahaba is: how will you pray? How will salah be? If one day is equal to one year for example. So I am praying salatul fajr in January; when do I pray salatul fajr? That’s the question. How will the time for salah be? Their focus is this: salah is the most important thing. How will I do that?
I remind myself: let us prioritize our lives because like my brother said, it’s not coming back. What is gone is gone. It’s over. It’s good if it’s good. It’s not good if it’s not good. If the driver, driver, driver—if driver, driver, driver, life is full of this. Alhamdulillah, at least in my life, I’ve never seen people say, “no, I didn’t have the opportunity.” That’s a lie. That is a lie. Everybody has opportunity. The question is, how do you use that opportunity? It’s more important than anything else which I’m doing. So I’ll do it. If that is what I need to do, I will do it. As I told you, there are other ways, but point being, what do you do? Somebody asked the president of Harvard, they said, “you know, courses are very expensive and this and that.” He said, “if you think learning is expensive, try ignorance.”
If you think learning is expensive, try ignorance. Just think about it. The Sahaba, we know this story about so many of them. Sayyidina Ali—he is the cousin of Rasulullah. He’s living in his house. Yet, he would go and work in the dead orchard of one guy and he would work for half a day. He worked very well, very sincerely, very hard. He was a great man. And at the end of half a day, this man said, look, why don’t you finish the day? Why don’t you work for the full day? You will get double the amount of money which I’m giving you now. Because he’s getting a good work and he’s happy with it. He said, no, this is enough for me. What are you going to do now? He said, I will go and sit in the company of Rasulullah. He didn’t say, well, you know, at the end of the day, at 5pm or whatever, I’m going home anyway; he’s there. I’m in his company for the whole day, the whole night. Why do I need to sacrifice half my earning? No. Even people who have that kind of privilege still—no, no, this is something I have to sacrifice half my day’s earning and go and sit in the company of Rasulullah, listen to him, whatever. And it’s not as if the Prophet was holding a specific class, I will have this class from this time to this time. I’m going to teach you this fiqh or something. No. No, no, we don’t know. Maybe, when I’m going and sitting in the company of Rasulullah, maybe he will not say anything at all. He used to be—he used to spend a lot of time in silence. There’s a huge value in silence in Islam. Silence and solitude, two things which we don’t seem to have. We must always have some noise in our—you know, driving somewhere, something’s going on in the car. You are at home, something’s going on. Otherwise, you’ve got earphones and something. Even. I’m saying even if it is listening to Quran, even if it is listening to some bayan, right? I’m not saying necessarily that whoever is listening is listening to something haram. No, maybe something good. My question is why even that? What is wrong with silence? What is wrong with making zikr of Allah in your heart? What is wrong in silence and reflection and introspection? You can’t—you cannot do. Even if you are listening to Quran, you cannot do reflection and introspection simultaneously with that. It’s simply—simply not doable.
So by all means, please listen to Quran. I’m not against that. I’m saying there is a place for reflection, introspection, thinking about your own life. When is that going to happen? Because we have removed silence from our lives. You must always have somebody. No, no being alone. Either somebody physically or somebody virtually on these phones. So this app going on ping and that pong and this Reddit and this one and what not. These two things are very important to cultivate this love for silence and a love for solitude. Navisaheb used to be very—he used to be silent for a long period of time. And the whole story began because of his love for solitude. He would go and sit in the gara, gara ira. I mean he had a wife. He had—you know, he had a wife. He had a husband. Even before that. But he would go and sit by himself alone. For days at a time. Not—I mean we are here, we are not even talking about minutes and hours. For days at a time. Solitude. Just alone with Allah.
So maybe he would do that and Sayyidina Ali might say, well, you know, I spent my whole day, I came and sat here and nothing is happening. He must always have continuously. In the masajis also, nothing is happening. It’s a very simple thing. People sometimes—at least in America—why is nothing happening? He said, “nothing is happening.” Did you pray Fajr? Yes. Zohar? Azhar? Maghrib? Isha? Juma? This is nothing? The most important thing. Now if they ask him, “Ya Salah, which is the best action?” He said, “Salah ala waqtihah.” The salah at its time. The best action. That best action is happening in your masjid five times a day plus Juma. And you say nothing is happening? Because our whole mind is oriented towards this duniyawi, this worldly concept of something happening and that something has to be an event. Some event. So this class, that class, so on, so on, so on. You get this—you know, the Sheikh from here, Sheikh from there—and he will come here and he will give one lecture and then you pay him quietly. Something must happen. Oh, very nice, very active masjid. Absolute nonsense. Why would I do all this? I am not against—you know, doing. But if you make your deen just event related, event by event, otherwise there is nothing. Laaha alaqo talib.
The Sahaba didn’t—they did not; Nabi did not do this. The Sahaba did not do this. They didn’t have events. Nabi would say one thing and they would go back. They would reflect. They would reflect on it. They would think about it. They would take action on it. Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala revealed: you cannot reach the level of birr until you spend in the path of Allah what you love the most. Abu Talha al-Ansari comes and says, “Here are the papers to my garden, which is the most expensive piece of real estate in Madinah. I am giving it in the path of Allah.” Nabi said, why? What happened? He said, “this is the ayat, you just decided. Allah is saying, ‘I cannot reach this.’ I want to live with it. This is what I love the most. My best property. I’ve got multiple property, but this is the best. Please take it. Spend in the path of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala. Give it away in charity.” Nabi said, “you sell it and distribute it among your own family members. Give me a deduction. I learn something, I put it into practice.”
I remind myself and you, let us think about this and focus on this and say, Alhamdulillah, we have enough and more examples of what to do. And the question of prioritizing our lives. Let us not waste any time because it doesn’t come back. What’s gone is gone. So let’s not wait for some more to go. No. Prioritize it. And whoever catches this message in your youth, like you guys, believe me, it’s a huge advantage, major, major advantage for you. So take advantage of that. Alhamdulillah, Allah put the thought in your mind. Maximize it now. We ask Allah to help us to do that. We ask Allah to help us to do that. We ask Allah to help us to achieve His Rida because there is nothing but nothing which is more important than that. Wa sallallahu ala nabiyyil kareem wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma’in bi rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Alhamdulillah.