The Greatest News
A young man I know is a government employee in Delhi. I have known him for a long time. One day, I had gone out for some work, and when I came home at night, I was told that he had come several times to the house to meet me.
Just then the bell rang. It was him. Seeing me, he burst into a smile and said, “I’ve come to give you some good news.” And then he told me that he had been promoted at work and had received a raise in his salary.
I thought to myself, “If someone has some important news, he just can’t keep it to himself! He simply has to share it with others. In fact, he goes out of his way sometimes just to find someone whom he can share his news with. If someone buys a new car or has built a new house, he can’t survive without talking about it. If in a gathering, his car or house does not become a subject of discussion, he turns the ongoing conversation in such a direction that he can tell others about his car or house. This is human nature. There’s no human being who isn’t eager to tell others his important news!”
Today, uncountable voices compete with each other for attention. Everyone has some message which he wants to convey to others. But in this enormous crowd of people desperate to say something or the other, there is no one who is eager to convey news about the Hereafter. Speakers and writers there are in plenty, but none knows or is concerned about the Hereafter. Everyone has news about something or the other to do with this world. But no one has news about the Hereafter that they want to tell others about. If they had such news, they would obviously share it with others. In that case, given the enormous importance of the Hereafter, all other news would actually be no news at all, and people would spend all their energy and time only sharing with others news about the Hereafter. They would see no work as ‘work’ other than the work of making people fearful of Hell and conveying the good news of Heaven.
If people come to know that in the next few moments there is going to be an earthquake or that a volcano is going to erupt, they will talk only about this. They will forget everything else. But speakers are carrying on with their speeches, and writers are carrying on with their writings, and all these speeches and writings are so utterly empty of mention of the Hereafter that it is as if people have no news at all of the impending enormously momentous Day of Judgment.
People are generally entangled in the problems of their immediate environment—such as their personal or community issues of an economic, political and social nature. Because they experience these all around them, they imagine that they are the matters of real importance. And so, they get tangled in discussing and debating such issues. In fact, however, the biggest issue is the issue of the Hereafter. The Hereafter is hidden from our sight, but it is the biggest of all impending events, and is so much more deserving of being talked about than every other event.
