Man’s Earnings
Everyone has been given opportunities; some use them to earn the world, others to gain everlasting life. Seeing opportunities as God’s gifts and using them in the service of God will earn a man the everlasting gardens of Paradise in the Hereafter.
The following verse from the chapter of the Quran entitled, Al-Ahqaf, states:
“On the Day when those who deny the truth are brought before the Fire, it will be said to them, ‘You have had the good things of the life of this world, and you enjoyed them. Now this Day you shall be requited with humiliating punishment, because you were arrogant in the land without justification, and because you acted rebelliously.’” (46:20)
Man has been endowed with certain faculties in this world. He has been invested with bodily strength and blessed with intellectual prowess. He has been granted access to wealth, rank, resources, and opportunities. All these human faculties are from God. He has given them to man for a purpose: that man should use them to earn something for himself.
There are two ways for a man to “earn”. One is that which leads to what the Quran calls being “arrogant in the land without justification, and because you acted rebelliously.” However, another form of earning is the opposite of this, which is the earning of humility and graciousness from what one has. Let us put this another way. If a person is proud of what he has in this world, if he uses it for his self-aggrandizement, if he makes it just a stepping-stone to personal power, he has wasted his energies. He has wasted them because he has expended them on this ephemeral world. What can be left for him in the eternal world of God?
The other form of earning comes from seeing the resources he has been endowed with as God’s gift. A man sees his helplessness before God and thanks Him for His countless blessings. Instead of using his faculties and resources for personal ends, he devotes them to the service of God. Earnings gained from life’s opportunities will stand in good stead in the long run, for they will remain with man into all eternity. Man’s earnings will open out to him in the form of Paradise’s everlasting gardens; he will be able to taste the fruits of his earthly efforts.
Everyone has been given opportunities; some use them to earn the world, others to gain everlasting life.
