Minarets of Worldly Glory
Once, I struck up a conversation with a man who, some 30 years earlier, had been an ordinary mechanic. When I met him, he had become the owner of several factories. I remarked, ‘Your business has expanded quite considerably!’ He very happily replied, ‘I’ve earned so much that even if my children don’t work, they can comfortably eat for a hundred years!’
Now, this is an extreme example. However, today everyone’s case is similar to this in some sense. Everyone is confident that he has ‘settled’ his matters once and for all, and that he is now free of any danger for at least a ‘hundred years’.
Some people are happy by pleasing their elders. Someone is very glad that he has the title deeds to a huge property. Someone takes immense pride in his job and bank balance. Someone relies on his physical prowess and his penchant to boss over and control others. Someone has nothing, but yet he runs after others to flatter them and feather his own little nest. He thinks he has at last found a protective umbrella to stand under and that now nothing can harm him.
But when an earthquake strikes, it renders completely meaningless all such false supports. For an earthquake, there is no difference between a grand palace and a tiny hut. In its eyes, the strong and the weak are alike. It destroys the helpless in the same manner as it does those who think they have firm supports to bank on. It reminds us how utterly helpless a person truly is.
An earthquake is a prior indication from God that tells us what is finally going to happen to every one of us one day – the Day of Judgment. It is a sort of mini Day of Judgment that reminds of the great Day that will dawn one day. When fearsome tremors and upheavals force us to lose all consciousness, when buildings collapse like a house of cards, when the bowels of the earth are thrown up and what is on the surface of the earth is swallowed inside – at that moment, a person realizes that, in the face of the forces of nature, he is utterly helpless. He can only helplessly watch the dance of devastation happening around him, without being able to do anything about it at all.
The earthquake of the Day of Judgment will be a trillion times more severe than the earthquakes that happen in this world. At that time, all the supports that we lean on will be utterly shattered. People will be dumbstruck, completely losing all their intelligence. The minarets of glory that people have built for themselves will come crashing down, and nothing at all will remain of them. On that day, only those will have a support to lean on who had not taken the things of this world as a support. On that day, only those people will be successful who had surrendered to God in this world, at a time when everyone else had forgotten God and had, instead, sought support from the things of the world.
