“We’ll have class online inshaAllah” was what Shaykh Abdul Nasir told us in an email early Friday morning. It had snowed at night, and driving conditions were bad. Ice all over the roads, cars covered in ice/snow, and literally freezing cold temperatures. It was so bad, local scholars were reminding people that Jumu’ah is not obligatory on someone if driving is too dangerous. This weekend would be an interesting one.
As Texas is not prepared for snow, roads still had ice on them two days later. Thus, we were, for the most part, stuck inside. It is amazing how much value something as simple as leaving the house has when one can’t do so. For that matter, it seems that when we lose something, we see the true value of what we had. Consequently, we see the Prophet, sallalLahu ‘alaihi wa-sallam (peace and blessings be upon him), warning us not to fall into this trap, and reminding us to value things we have before we lose them.
The most well-known example of this is the advice of the Prophet, sallalLahu ‘alaihi wa-sallam, “Take benefit of five before five: Your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before you are preoccupied, and your life before your death.”
Let us try to take these moments as reminders to take advantage of what we have and use our abilities, time, and possessions in the correct manner, before it is too late. We have many blessing we often overlook. They could be something we have had our whole life, or something we just got recently.
Regardless, it would be smart for us to save ourselves from the sorrow of realizing that we had wasted what was given to us once it is taken away.