Time’s Up!

An examination was being held in a school. The students were bent over their desks, busily writing away, hurriedly answering their examination paper. Then, in a short while, the bell rang, announcing that the time allotted for the examination was over. The invigilator called out: “Stop writing! Time’s up!”

The very same thing that happens in an examination hall in a school happens, on a wider scale, in every person’s life. In this world, every human being is sitting in a vast examination hall as it were. Each of us is writing an examination, whose allotted period extends for the entire span of time that has been given to us, from the time we are born till the moment we die. This period has been fixed for each one of us already. As soon as this period is up, God’s angel arrives and announces that the time given to us in this world is up! The angel tells us that we now must face death and appear before our Lord and Creator and be answerable for all that we did while on earth.

What every student goes through in an examination hall helps us understand what the examination of life is all about. Life is just an examination. And death is an event that takes you to the next world, where you will face the consequences of all your deeds while on earth.

While sitting in the examination hall and writing his paper, a student is very alert and serious. His entire attention is on what he is writing. He is determined to perform excellently in the examination, and so he tries his best and puts in all his effort.

We need to lead our lives and to pass through this examination of life with precisely the same mindset. We should be fully determined to correctly answer the ‘examination paper’ of life that God has given us, so that when the time allotted for the examination is over and our results are out, we should be greeted with the good news of having passed, not with the shame of having failed.