By Adamu Muhammad Dodo
People keep lamenting how time flies.
“Monday was just but yesterday and today is Friday. Can you imagine that we’ve passed through Sunday to Thursday as if within few hours?”
This has been the lament, ignoring how people grow in age with passage of time and how every minute spent is a step towards the final end defined by a funeral.
“How prepared are you?” The Qutba threw the challenge
Everything is designed based on time as dictated by the Creator, Allah SWT. He created human kinds into nations and tribes, into genders and colours in their equality not for any sentiment, avarice or pride of being rather than mere identity.
The best of human kind is not judged by originality or regionally, identity or family familiarity, fraternity lurking in lies, deception, forgery or suppression of records, oppression of the downtrodden, subjugation of the voiceless and/or loyalty to any form of injustice so injurious to a community.
“The best of you in the side of Allah SWT, is judged based on how famous or how powerful is one’s piety; complete and total devotion in worship,” to command the doing of good and condemn any act considered irreligious.
Every act of worship, the Qutba reminded, is designed according to time; one can’t change the prayer time, the Ramadhan fasting period, the time to perform hajj pilgrimage and the time to give out zakat.
One should not waste any time on idleness or conjectures when there’s devotion, Qur’anic recitation and even seeking for genuine means of feeding one’s family and training one’s children away from joining the class with those without attitude, the use and dump political thugs and/or those who mortgage their consciences for a miserable price to the irresponsible, clueless politicians who do not find it any worthy to be just and God fearing, whose romance with materialism and leadership blindfold them from seeing anything worthy with time utility, until the final hour and the day of the final and real accountability, when corruption associated with deception, certificate forgery and/or suppression of records would be out of the equation. When however atom weight of every action and intention, good or bad, will be put to account.
Friday, November, 2017, at about 2pm, was the time, sequel to the upgrading of, FMC Yola Mosque built by the Muslim staff of the hospital was commissioned for Jumu’at prayer by HRH the Lamido Adamawa ably represented by the Galadima Adamawa in company of Hakimin Yola (Chika soron Adamawa).
The Lamido Adamawa has charged the newly appointed Imam to transform the mosque into an institution of Islamic teaching and practice, as an instrument of cohesion, peaceful coexistence and unity of the Ummah as an entity.
Responding to newsmen, Prof. Auwal Muhammad Abubakar the Medical Director of the hospital expressed his appreciation that it was a welcome development.
“Some people used to take advantage of, with some flimsy excuses not to come back to work after Jumuat prayer.
“With the Friday mosques within the hospital, truancy will be a forgone issue,” Auwal said.
Malam Haruna Yawale was turbaned as the Imam. The first qutba was an all-encompassing, the Van Fodio script, which touched on tauhid, commanding the doing of good and commanding bad deeds aid at societal reorientation to purity of piety.
How time tries to reclaim the speed of light. How life is moving fast to its final destination for every effort either to succeed or to fail.
Yesterday, the Qutba reminded, is only shared as a remembered history, tomorrow is served as full of institutions, of uncertainties and that anything that is meant for today, is to make up for the constraints of yesterday, it should not therefore, be left for the uncertain time in the
tomorrow, defining uncertain future.
One should therefore utilise his youthful age full of strength and vigour, wisely worship before he could be overtaken by old age full of regret.
Coined as a similitude, Jay Shetty shared his take where he articulated that:
“There are three things that control our lives: Time, wealth and health.
“When we’re young, we have time. Time to play. Time to explore. Time to waste. Time to be curious.
“When we’re young, we generally have health, we have energy, we have strength but most of us don’t have wealth. We don’t have all the money in the world. We can’t buy everything we want. We don’t get everything we want.
“As we get older, we still have our health. It may not be the same, it is still there but we now have more wealth. We have more money, we have a home, we have devices and possessions. We have a car, we have access to things but we don’t always have time.
“Money can buy a house but not a home, it can buy a bed but not sleep, it can buy a book but not knowledge.
“Money can earn a title but not respect, it can buy a clock but not time.
“Those of us who think we have no time for our health, will sooner or later have to find time for our illness.
“When we’re young, we have time and health but no money. when we’re older, we have money and health but no time.
“And finally in old-age, we have money and time but no health to use that wealth.
“So, what do we do? We can have it all. Just not all at the same time.
“We place so much pressure on ourselves trying to get everything to be perfect. trying to balance. Trying to get everything to work together, not recognising that it’s none of those things that actually create happiness or fulfilment in life.
“As we get older, time, health and wealth will all be taken away.
“But the one thing that can never be taken away from us, is the impact we have on others, because, it lives on through them.
“Our health is the foundation of how we can build our time and wealth.
“And with that time and wealth, there are two key principles: we become successful by what we get, but we become happy by what we give. And what we give includes our time, wealth, our energy.
“And when those things are used to make a positive difference in the lives of others, to help others move forward, to make an impact, that legacy will never be taken away.
“And as Maya Angelou said; ‘people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel,” Jay Shetty.
Living a positive legacy could be referred to as charity, an investment called “sadakatul jariya”
The qutba called on the ummah to be conscious of time before it could get to be too late, lest they fall into the class of hypocrisy.