All through your life you have no doubt made great efforts to obtain things you wanted. Think of your academic career, for instance. You probably still have memories of many exams you sat. The most important of these are university entrance exams. Most young people describe university entrance exams as turning points in their lives. They think that an exam lasting just a few hours will shape their whole futures. They therefore spend years working, going without sleep, giving up a whole range of social activities, and devote themselves solely to their studies. Their only aim is to get into the university of their choice. They demonstrate great patience and determination in order to do so.
A person whose greatest ambition in life is to own a nice house on the other hand, first needs to possess the necessary financial resources to acquire it. Such people work day and night to find a good job and improve their means, for which reason they make great efforts to earn as much as possible. Only after long years of work and sacrifice can that person buy the house that he has set his heart on.
As well as these, if a person also has ambitions such as obtaining wealth, the esteem of society, fame and a specific career, then he needs to work hard for them and be prepared to endure certain difficulties.
Yet these examples you are watching are restricted to the transitory benefits that can be acquired in the life of this world. And all these benefits disappear with death, or can suddenly be taken away while one is still alive. For instance, a young person who has spent the years doing nothing but working in order to pass his exams can lose his life in an accident without even having taken those exams. Or the house that someone bought after years of hard work can burn down, destroying all that effort and hard work. All the things that people want to lay their hands on in the life of this world are transitory. Yet alongside these, there is also a real life of endless beauty and infinite blessings. That is the life in the hereafter that comes after we die.
The life of this world is merely a temporary testing place, in which people are tried before they reach the infinite hereafter…
Many a Prophet has been killed, when there were many thousands with him! They did not give up in the face of what assailed them in the Way of God, nor did they weaken, nor did they yield. God loves the steadfast. All they said was, “Our Lord, forgive us our wrong actions and any excesses we went to in what we did and make our feet firm and help us against these unbelieving people.” So God gave them the reward of this world and the best reward of the hereafter. God loves good-doers. (Qur’an, 3: 146-148)
