Time’s Up!

An examination was underway in a school. The students were bent over their desks, writing their answers. A short while later, a teacher announced: “Time’s up! Stop writing!” The students had to put down their pens and hand in their answer-scripts.

This scenario in an examination hall in a school applies, in a wider sense, to our life as such. In this world, we are, as it were, sitting in a vast examination hall. Here, each of us is writing our own exam. We have each been allotted a previously-decreed period of time in which to write our paper. As soon as this period is over, an angel of God arrives and, in a silent voice, announces that the time for us to act in this world is up and that we have to now appear before God to account for our actions.

The predicament of a student in an examination hall tells us something very profound about life. The pre-death phase of our life, which we spend in this world, is an examination. And death is the event that marks our being sent into the next world, where we receive the result of our examination. Only those of us who spent the exam period of their life in the right way will receive a good result in the next, post-death phase. The others, who failed their exam, will get nothing but loss and despair.

A student who is giving an examination is very serious about his task. His entire focus is on writing his answers as best as he can. We must have precisely the same attitude towards the examination of life too. We must try to solve the ‘exam paper’ given to us by God in the best manner so that after the exam of our life gets over and the results are declared, we are delighted to know that we have passed!