Assalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh

Bismillahir- Rahmanir-Rahim

1. Opening

Friends who are blessed by Allah, In living this worldly life, Allah SWT has equipped us with incredibly sophisticated and extraordinary tools: hearing, sight, and intellect. All of them were created not merely to earn a living or accumulate wealth, but as tools of _maʿrifah_—a means to recognize the truth, understand the signs of Allah’s greatness, and guide us to wisdom in life.But what happens if this function of maʿrifah is lost? Humans will walk with their eyes closed, ignore divine signposts, and only realize it when everything is already too late. Truly, there is no tragedy more horrifying than a regret that comes when the door of repentance has been tightly shut.Psycho-spiritually, regret is the deepest form of inner conflict when a person realizes the vast distance between “what he should have done” and “what he already ended up doing.” In this world, regret can still give birth to correction [tawbah]. But in the Hereafter, regret turns into a mental torment that burns the soul before their bodies are burned by the fire of Hell.This tragic reality caused by the loss of the function of maʿrifah is stated precisely in the Qur’an through the sorrowful cry of the dwellers of Hell:

وَقَالُوا لَوْ كُنَّا نَسْمَعُ أَوْ نَعْقِلُ مَا كُنَّا فِي أَصْحَابِ السَّعِيرِ

“And they will say, ‘If only we had listened or reasoned, we would not be among the companions of the Blaze.’”[QS. Al-Mulk: 10]

They realize that the senses and intellect they once prided themselves on in the world were actually paralyzed from their true function. Rasulullah ﷺ also reminded us to make use of time and sound reason before regret comes to visit:

اغْتَنِمْ خَمْسًا قَبْلَ خَمْسٍ: شَبَابَكَ قَبْلَ هَرَمِكَ، وَصِحَّتَكَ قَبْلَ سَقَمِكَ، وَغِنَاكَ قَبْلَ فَقْرِكَ، وَفَرَاغَكَ قَبْلَ شُغْلِكَ، وَحَيَاتَكَ قَبْلَ مَوْتِكَ

“Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before your busyness, and your life before your death.”[HR. Al-Ḥākim]

2. Lessons and Message

Imagine a quiet night, where a person lies weak in the ICU. His heartbeat slows on the monitor. In the final seconds of his life, he gazes at his family with a look that is deeply sorrowful and full of fear. His tears fall, soaking the pillow.Not because he fears losing his wealth, but because he has just realized how fragile this life is and how empty the record of deeds he carries. He wants to ask for just one minute to prostrate, just one second to seek forgiveness, but the Angel of Death never negotiates. That scene is a small picture of the colossal regret humans will face in the Hereafter if they waste the function of their intellect.

So that we are not among those who lament in the Hereafter, let us make a simple, thought-provoking analogy.Imagine a student named Tejo. Tomorrow morning he must take a final exam that will determine his graduation. The night before, the lecturer kindly shared the exam outline and the main guidebook in the WhatsApp group. But what does Tejo do? Instead of reading and thinking about the outline, Tejo gets busy playing online games until dawn and ignores all the notifications. The next day in the exam room, the moment he sees the question paper, the sheet feels like an alien language to Tejo. He starts scratching his head—even though it’s not itchy—staring at the classroom ceiling, then sobbing while lamenting, “Oh Allah… if only last night I had opened WhatsApp and thought clearly, I definitely wouldn’t be conspiring with this F grade!” Funny and pitiful, isn’t it? A worldly exam that lasts only two hours can make someone half-dead with stress if he refuses to listen and think. What more the eternal exam of the Hereafter? The Qur’an is the best “exam outline” sent by Allah, so it is both comical and astounding if we choose to ignore it and still hope to pass into Paradise.

3. Conclusion & Closing

Friends, the profound moral message of this verse is a call to immediately “wake up” from our long sleep of heedlessness. Let us not become people who only start using sound reason clearly when the dawn of the Hereafter has already risen—because at that moment, the truth we see will only become fuel for regret.Let us put our hearing back to work by listening to religious counsel, and use our intellect to reflect on every step we take. Before breath stops at the throat, and before the cry “If only we had listened…” becomes the first sentence we utter in the Hereafter

.May Allah SWT save us from the heedlessness of the heart and count us among His wise servants

. والله أعلم بالصواب

الحمد لله رب العالمين

Wassalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.

Abu Sultan Al-Qadrie