Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Sunday Guardian, Oct 14, 2018

The present world is a preview of the Hereafter. Here, a person receives in embryonic form the joys and blessings which God has made fully available in the world to come. This is so that he may see the infinite joys of eternity in the guise of the incomplete blessings of this world-so that he may see one drop of water, and realize that it is indicative of a vast ocean beyond.

One who understands the true nature of this world will look beyond the ephemeral pleasures of this world to the eternal joys of the Hereafter. Only one who does not see the world in its true light will set store in it, making it his ultimate goal instead of the Hereafter.

The sun shines in order to acquaint man with the radiance of the after-life. Flowers and trees blossom in order to remind one of the beauty of God's' eternal world.

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The pleasures of this world should serve to increase one's longing for the world to come; but often one becomes so engrossed in them that one fails to even think of the infinitely greater joys of the Hereafter.

One who is seduced by the alluring pleasures of this world loses out on the next world. What anguish and despair he will feel when he reaches that world, and beholds the eternal blessings which it has to offer.

He will realize then his foolishness. "This," he will cry out, "is the true life. Earthly life has no reality now. But I have lost eternal life for the sake of the transitional blessings of the world.

I have forfeited true and lasting bliss - all for the sake of pleasures which did not endure. In seeking freedom on earth, where there was no freedom to be found, I lost the true freedom that is to be had now."