How Man Loses Out
One who is seduced by the alluring pleasures of this world loses out on the next world. Feeling anguish and despair on reaching that world and beholding its eternal blessings, he will cry out, “This is the true life that I have lost.”
If you give someone one dollar and then tell him that million-dollar bills are lying ahead, which can all be his if he runs to get them, he will not bother about the one dollar; he will forget all about it and rush for the fortune.
So, it is with this world and the Hereafter. The present world is a preview of the Hereafter. Here, man receives in embryonic form the joys and blessings which God has made fully available in the world to come. It 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 at it like the one-dollar bill which one forsakes for a fortune that awaits him in the Hereafter. He will look beyond the ephemeral pleasures of this world to the eternal joys of the Hereafter. The 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 to acquaint man with the radiance of the Afterlife, but the man looks at the sun and makes it his object of worship. Flowers and trees blossom to remind man of God’s eternal world, but man looks at them as the ultimate form of beauty and makes his Paradise among them. The pleasures of this world should increase one’s longing for the world to come, but man becomes so engrossed in them that he 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 will he feel when he reaches that world, and he beholds the eternal blessings it offers! Then he will realize his foolishness. “This,” he will cry out, “is the true life. Earthly life has no reality now. However, 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 now.”
