Nouman Ali Khan – Efforts That Earn Us the Reward of Meeting Allah – World Quran Convention
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of sharing experiences and experiences to achieve success in a social setting. They touch on the use of self-service, metal ties, dressing up, and receiving drinks. The segment also touches on the loss of human existence and the loss of family members, as well as the importance of rewarding efforts in achieving success. Viewers are encouraged to sign up for a YouTube video to learn the Qmill.
AI: Summary ©
We're so imperfect.
Ya Allah, how can I face you?
And now we're in Jannah, we're dressed up
to meet with Allah Himself and the drink
is being poured.
And now what does Allah say?
And I know and you know that no
amount of effort we can ever make in
this life is going to be enough.
There's no way.
No, nothing you can do and I can
do in this life can be so valuable
that the payment for it is a meeting
with Allah Himself.
We're nearing the conclusion of this incredible day.
And it's my responsibility to share with you
some closing reflections from Surah Al-Insan.
The first thing I'd like to start with
is that this surah has a unique, beautiful
signature.
Every time Allah talks about Jannah, He also
talks about Nahr.
When God talks about heaven, He also talks
about *.
When He talks about reward, He also talks
about punishment.
But in this surah, Allah talked about punishment
very little.
Barely any.
And He spent most of this surah talking
about reward.
It's a special shift and a special mercy
of Allah that you can see in this
surah that Allah emphasized His reward so much
more than His punishment.
That's one immediate observation you'll make even if
you just read a translation of this surah.
There's a weird, strange incident.
My mind works in funny ways.
It's a story that happened, gosh, I think
it was more than 20 years ago.
I was memorizing Quran, but I used to
keep my mushaf with me.
And I was in an office building in
New York City.
Actually, not New York City, this time I
was already in Texas.
And I was visiting and I got in
the elevator and I was just kind of
reviewing a surah.
And the person next to me just looked
at me, he said, you Muslim?
And I said, yeah.
And he said, what do you guys get
in paradise anyway?
So he just kind of threw this question
at me.
And it's an elevator, so you literally have
to give him an elevator answer.
Because his floor could be, you know.
So I said, drinks.
And his floor came in, you know.
That's all he got.
And I'm gonna start by telling you that
this, the rewards of Jannah in this surah
uniquely, Allah does emphasize drinks quite a bit.
And in order to help you understand that,
I'm going to kind of give you three
different layers of, levels of drinks.
You guys ever been to a picnic?
Or somebody invites you to a barbecue?
Right?
Okay, if you've gone to a picnic or
a barbecue, if you throw a barbecue like
I would, I have one time in college
I threw a barbecue even though I didn't
know how to do barbecue.
But my college roommate was like, all your
friends are coming.
I was like, yeah.
You know how to barbecue?
He said, I knew it.
So then we put together this last minute
barbecue thing.
And the problem was drinks.
And we don't have enough cups.
I used to live, I was a college
student.
We don't have enough glasses in the house.
So we went to the Walmart.
And bought, you know, those plastic cups, the
whole bag.
And then we put that and a couple
of bottles of juice and whatever.
So people, all my friends that come, they
can just pour themselves a drink.
This is economy level service.
Right?
This is you help yourself.
Pick whichever drink you want.
Here's the cup.
Pour it yourself.
Drink yourself.
All good.
But then, that's one kind of service.
Self-service.
Get yourself a drink.
But then sometimes you get invited to a
fancy wedding, fancy dinner reception, something like that.
Everybody's dressed up.
And they have people that dress them.
They dress them like penguins.
They walk around and, more drinks there, more
drinks there.
You know those people?
And then you have the table, it already
has all the glasses upside down on the
table.
You know, aqwabun mawdu'a, the Qur'an
calls it.
So you flip the glass and the guy
comes and he pours the drink in.
And then you drink it and he pours
it in again.
And you feel obligated so you keep drinking.
And he keeps pouring it.
You have to tell him, please stop.
Right?
But the idea is, did you have to
get up and get the drink?
Or was it served to you?
It's served to you.
It's a little bit elite service.
It's not the same as the barbecue that
I did with my friends.
It's not the plastic cups where you go
help yourself.
Now what's happening in surah al-insan is
Allah first says, إِنَّ الْأَبْرَارَ يَشْرَبُونَ مِن كَاسٍ
Good people are going to be drinking from
cups.
كَانَ مِزَاجُهَا كَافُورًا And Allah talks about the
flavor of the drink a little bit.
But it seems from the verbiage, they're going
themselves and they're helping themselves drinking from these
cups.
And then later on in that same set
of ayat, He also says, يُفَجِّرُونَهَا تَفْجِرْ عَيْنًا
يَشْرَبُ بِهَا عِبَادَ اللَّهِ You know, and then
so this is gonna be the cups.
What are you gonna fill in the cups?
There's a waterfall or spring, and you just
go there and you put your cup and
you drink.
That's the scene.
But it still sounds like self-service, doesn't
it?
A little bit later, a couple of ayat
later, and we heard the beautiful qira'ah
of those ayat too.
يُسْقَوْنَ مِن كَأْسٍ You know, يُسْقَوْنَ مِن كَأْسٍ
كَانَ مِزَاجُهَا زَنجَبِيلًا Now, Allah upgrades it.
It's like some higher level, like the service
in Jannah is moving up.
And now Allah says, they will be given
drinks.
They're not drinking, they are being given drinks.
They are being given to drink.
Which suggests, now you don't have to go
and get your drink.
Now the servers are coming to you.
يَطُوفُ عَلَيْهِمْ بِالْدَانُ الْمُخَلَّدُونَ يُطَافُ عَلَيْهِمْ بِآنِيَةَ مِن
فِي الضَّوَى وَأَكْوَابِ That people, the servants will
be circling around them.
Would you like this flavor?
Please try this one, this one, this one,
this one.
And servants are constantly circling around, serving you
drinks.
You don't even have to get up.
But then comes another stage.
And Allah adds something that He didn't add
before.
All of a sudden, Allah starts describing that
these people are now getting dressed up.
So, I mean I thought the elite level
is when the drinks are being served to
you.
Now something more is happening.
Allah says, عَلِيَهُمْ ثِيَابُ سُنْدُسٍ خُضْرٍ وَإِسْتَبْرَقٍ وَحُلُّوا
أَسَاوِرَ مِنْ فِضَّةٍ That they are being given
green robes and special kinds of silks.
And some of the guys sitting here are
like, I don't wanna wear silk.
I don't even like green.
And then it says, you know, and then
they're gonna be given silver, meaning precious metal.
The idea here is, by the way, some
of the most expensive ties are silk ties.
Some of the most expensive cloths.
سُنْدُسٍ إِسْتَبْرَقٍ is a reference to exotic clothing.
You're being especially dressed and some of the
most expensive watches have precious metals in them.
And people, men also, not just women, pay
tens of thousands of dollars for those watches
to have some metal on that is precious
in value.
So it's still something relevant to us today.
But when do you get dressed up like
that?
You get dressed up when you're going to
some important place and you're gonna meet some
important people.
You dress differently when you go to meet
the president than when you go to meet
your best friend or when you go to
meet your neighbor.
You don't get dressed up to meet your
neighbor.
If you do, see me later, you have
a problem.
But there's a difference.
So now the Qur'an is saying there
were drinks being served, they were serving themselves.
Then the drinks got upgraded.
And now, before he mentions the next set
of drinks, people are getting especially dressed for
some kind of special ceremony in Jannah.
So it's as if the people of Jannah,
may Allah make all of us those people
of Jannah, are being prepared for a special
event that before you go to that event,
you have to get dressed up a little
bit.
And so you're given these special clothes for
this special occasion.
And so now you're wondering what's gonna happen
at this special event.
And Allah Azawajal says, وَسَقَاهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ شَرَابًا طَهُورًا
Their Rabb, Allah Himself, is going to give
them a purified drink.
So Allah was getting us dressed for meeting
Himself.
And not only do we get to meet
Allah, Allah is the one giving us the
drink.
Like the language of it is so powerful.
So when I said to this gentleman in
the elevator, what do you get in Jannah?
And I just said, drinks?
This is not just a drink, this is
something else.
You know, no one to us, we know,
Allah Azawajal, we call Him Subhanahu wa Ta
'ala.
Right?
The highest, the exalted, nobody's higher than Allah.
But let me give you just an idea
of what it means.
When you think highly of someone, when someone
is of high value to you, the more
important someone is, the less you can get
their time.
Very hard to get their time.
There were, at one point, one of my
kids needed a special doctor's appointment.
And the specialist, because there's only a few
specialists in the entire country, had a waiting
list for six months to get one appointment.
And if you get that appointment, and you
are five minutes late, guess what?
Canceled, wait another year.
Get back in the line again.
You better not miss that appointment.
And that appointment itself might be ten minutes.
Just ten minutes, you know.
And the idea that when you get time
from a VIP, and every second matters, every
second counts.
Here, it's not you getting time from Allah.
Allah is making special time for you.
Just who's more important than Allah?
And Allah is not only making special time
for you, He's pouring you the drink Himself.
This is not just a reward.
This is not just a drink.
And it's interesting, all the other drinks were
described with a flavor.
Kafura, Zanjabila.
But this drink that Allah pours, that Allah
gives, He says about it, وَسَقَاهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ شَرَابًا
طَهُورًا Allah will provide them a drink that
is purified.
As if you are in the purest company
of all, and the flavor of this drink
can only be described as ultimately pure.
It's beyond description.
The most you can know is it's gonna
be ultimately pure.
شَرَابًا طَهُورًا All of this amounts to one
thing, more than anything else, it amounts to
acknowledgement.
I'm not invisible.
I'm being seen.
I'm being appreciated.
I'm being singled out by Allah Himself.
And it didn't stop there.
At the moment you're, you know, I mean,
I imagine I would be, I'm one of
those people, when I imagine Jannah in my
own head, one of the things I'm very
nervous about is meeting the people that Allah
talks about in the Quran.
Like those are the real celebrities.
Like imagine you're in Jannah and there's like
Ibrahim A.S. is right there like, I
did a story about you.
I hope I got it right.
You know, or Musa A.S. or Umar
bin Al-Khattab A.S. He's a huge
man.
And then you're like, can I hang out
with you?
Don't get mad.
But if we're nervous about meeting the Messenger
of Allah S.W.T., meeting these amazing
prophets, meeting these amazing salihin that are acknowledged
in the Quran.
Can you imagine our state, our emotions when
we're about to have a meeting with who?
With Allah Himself.
Like the level of nervousness.
Because everything we did in this life, Ya
Allah, please accept.
رَبَّنَا تَقَبَّلْ مِنَّا Ya Allah, we do lots
of mistakes.
Maybe our deeds aren't good enough.
Maybe our intentions weren't clean enough.
Maybe our actions weren't in accordance to your
will.
Maybe we fell short.
Maybe, نَسِيْنَا أَوْ أَخْطَأْنَا We forgot things, we
made mistakes.
We're so imperfect.
Ya Allah, how can I face you?
And now we're in Jannah, we're dressed up
to meet with Allah Himself and the drink
is being poured.
And now what does Allah say?
And I know and you know that no
amount of effort we can ever make in
this life is going to be enough.
There's no way.
No, nothing you can do and I can
do in this life can be so valuable
that the payment for it is a meeting
with Allah Himself.
There's no way.
And so Allah says, إِنَّ هَٰذَا كَانَ لَكُمْ
جَزَاءً This, this has been your guaranteed payment.
This is your reward.
So of all the rewards in Jannah, Jannah
has palaces, Jannah has homes, beautiful spouses, amazing
food, all of that.
The acknowledgement from Allah that all of this
is you being rewarded, meaning you earned it.
But what is it that you...
How did you earn it?
Allah says, وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُمْ مَشْكُورًا Your efforts have
always been appreciated.
Who's appreciating my effort in this ayah?
Allah Azza wa Jal.
Allah Azza wa Jal is acknowledging every one
of our efforts.
If you've heard me talk about this before,
remind yourself.
If you haven't listened carefully, this world that
we live in right now only respects results.
There is no respect for efforts.
There's only respect for results.
We had a winner of a contest and
we all acknowledged the result.
But there were lots of people who wrote
a story, but their efforts did not get
acknowledged.
Allah acknowledges them.
Human beings can't acknowledge everyone.
Human beings can only function when they operate
based on results.
When two teams are playing in the championship,
both teams are making an amazing amount of
effort.
But there's only gonna be one champion.
And there's not going to be a trophy
given for effort.
Because they made a lot of...
And may even be the team that lost
made more effort than the team that won.
But we don't celebrate the effort, we celebrate
the results.
But Allah...
And by the way, efforts are almost all
the time, many times our efforts are invisible.
People don't see the effort, people only see
the result.
If you see an amazing calligrapher, they just
move their hand, and oh my God, the
way they wrote, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.
Ya Allah, so beautiful, so easy for them.
But you don't see the thousand hours they
put in when they were writing it first
time.
Somebody said, why are you drawing an elephant?
No, it's not an elephant, that's Bismillah ar
-Rahman ar-Rahim.
There was a lot of effort before they
got to that point.
But people don't see the effort, people only
see the result.
Nobody's gonna care about who lost the election,
people are only gonna care about who won.
That's the result.
It doesn't matter if you had a really
good effort in the interview, if you didn't
get the job, you failed.
The effort doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how much work you put
into your project, if the project missed the
deadline, or you didn't get the result, all
of that effort is gone.
It doesn't count.
But Allah, the only one who says that
the only thing that matters in the next
life, and the thing that Allah will acknowledge
in the next life, will actually not be
results at all.
The only thing Allah will acknowledge is what?
Efforts.
And so much so, that that is the
world in which, in this world, efforts are
invisible, and results are visible.
And in that world, the results will disappear.
So the winner might become a loser.
And the loser might, the one who look
like a loser here, might become the winner.
By the way, the idea that someone who
look like they were winning, became a loser,
and someone who look like they were losing,
became a winner, that idea is captured in
the word, تَغَابٌ يَوْمَ يَجْمَعُكُمْ لِيَوْمِ الْجَمْعِ ذَلِكَ
يَوْمُ التَّغَابٌ Somebody thought they were winning, actually
their investments had failed.
Somebody thought their efforts are not being acknowledged,
all of them are being acknowledged.
That's the reward that Allah has given us.
And this is the most incredible realization that
a believer can live with.
Because we are now living in a time
where everybody is hungry for acknowledgment.
We are hungry for acknowledgment.
If you posted a video of yourself at
the convention today, and nobody viewed it, and
nobody liked it, and nobody commented, mashallah, and
nobody said anything, you feel invisible.
You feel offended.
You feel like, you know, these people, I'm
not gonna view their stuff now either.
What, three views?
And all three are myself?
From my two other phones?
We need attention.
Human beings need attention.
When there is a child, needs the dad's
or mom's attention.
Mama, mama, mama, mama.
And the moment you give them attention, they're
like, no thanks, now I'm gonna go to
dad because he's not paying attention.
We need attention all the time.
Somehow or someway, we need acknowledgment.
Allah has given us in this ayah, the
answer to our need for acknowledgment.
In this life, you can make a lot
of efforts to make your mom happy, to
make your dad happy, to make your boss
happy, to make your husband happy, to make
your wife happy, to make your son happy,
to make your daughter happy.
And guess what?
Many times, all those efforts, and at the
end of it, are they happy?
No.
And even worse, they say, you call that
trying?
What did you even do for me?
And you say, I made a lot of
effort.
Huh, you?
Effort?
Where is it?
I don't see it.
The people that love us the most, the
people that are closest to us the most,
even they can be blind to our efforts.
They just want to see the results.
And Allah, in those moments, when you know
you made the right effort, you did the
right thing.
Allah is teaching you and me that people,
myself, yourself, we are incapable of truly appreciating
anybody else's efforts.
But Allah does not let any of those
efforts disappear.
What does history record, people?
What does history record?
Does it record efforts or does it record
results?
It records results.
It records success and it records failure.
That's what history records.
History is incapable of recording efforts.
Let's tie this all up.
In the beginning of this surah, Allah said
something really mind-blowing.
هَلْ أَتَى عَلَى الْإِنسَانِ حِينٌ مِّنَ الدَّهْرِ لَمْ
يَكُنْ شَيْءً مَّذْكُورًا Was there ever a time,
in the endless span of time, as long
as time has existed, was there ever a
moment in time where the human being was
something that wasn't even remembered?
It could mean a few things.
Wasn't even remembered, wasn't even worthy of being
remembered.
But let me put this in perspective.
The physical universe as we know it is
14 something billion years old, or trillion years
old, I forget the number, it's billion years
old.
We are not that old on this planet.
The universe has been around a lot longer
than us.
And then the earth, several billion years old,
is a lot older than us.
And then even when human history began, we
cannot find archaeological evidence of human existence that
goes more than 20, 30, 40 thousand years
at the most.
At the most, most, most.
But human beings existed, we have no memory
of who they were and what they were.
There are so many nations in the world
that maybe 200, 300, 400 feet under the
ground, they may be buried here right now
that existed at some time, that were very
important people in their time, and no one
remembers them now.
No one knows about them now.
They're gone.
Their successes are gone, their failures are gone,
their castles are gone, their memory is gone,
their power is gone, their love is gone,
their hate, all of it's gone.
No trace left.
And then let's go a little closer.
All of us came out of our mothers.
Our mother, before she became pregnant, had no
idea who we were.
She didn't love us because we didn't exist.
She didn't care about us because we were
nothing.
We were not madhkur to her.
And then when she was pregnant, she didn't
even know at first, if we exist.
Even though we existed, we weren't even madhkur.
And then when she realized that she's starting
to throw up, she realized that something's happening,
then she started making lots of dua and
asking herself, I wonder what kind of baby
this will be.
Is it a boy or is it a
girl?
Is it gonna look like me or is
it gonna look like him?
She's trying to do dhikr of you but
it's not really possible to remember you or
know you because you're still an unknown.
You're still an unknown.
Even when you come out of your mother,
your parents love you, they hold you, but
they don't actually know who you are and
what your soul is capable of.
Or actually not know.
Most of our existence, we have been unknown.
Most of our existence.
I love my parents and I'm sure they
love their parents.
And I'm sure my grandparents love their parents.
And I'm sure my grandparents' parents love their
parents but I don't know them at all.
Actually, I go back a little bit in
history and they become, you know, not madhkurin.
I don't remember them.
I'd like to meet them in the akhirah
on the right side of things but I
have no idea who they are.
No recollection left.
The only thing you can get is a
family tree with some names.
But those stories, those people, we don't know.
What I'm trying to tell you is, not
only are our efforts invisible, but we ourselves
have mostly been invisible.
Not mentioned.
Not remembered.
And beyond the age of this universe, when
this entire universe is gone, when this earth
is gone from the way it is now,
Allah preserves one thing.
When the stars will not remain, the earth
will not remain, the sun will not remain,
the moon will not remain, the oceans will
not remain, our efforts and the memory of
our efforts will remain with Allah and He
will acknowledge it.
How incredible is that?
Our efforts are more timeless to Allah than
the age of the entire samawat and ard.
That's the power of our efforts.
So when Allah does not underestimate the value
of my efforts, then you and I don't
have the permission to look at our efforts
and say, well, I'm making all these efforts
but it's not getting any results so it
must be a failure.
We don't get to say that.
If we say that, then we must call
the efforts of Nuh a.s. a failure.
Why?
Because it's nine centuries of efforts and not
very many results.
Why is he a hero in the Quran?
Why are we honoring these prophets of Allah
like Nuh a.s.? It is actually those
incredible years of what?
Effort.
إِنَّ هَذَا كَانَ لَكُمْ جَزَاءً وَكَانَ سَعْيُكُمْ مَّشْكُورًا
And again, while no one can thank me,
no one will appreciate the efforts that I
made or you made, Allah is acknowledging them
Himself individually for every single believer.
That's the drink we get to drink in
the Akhirah.
That's the drink Allah is offering us in
this surah.
And with that spirit, when we become people
that want to give Allah this service in
this dunya, we want to just give Allah,
يُفُونَ بِالنَّذِر Then look at how we are
being served in the Akhirah.
This world is not about being served.
This world is about giving service.
And that world in surah al-Insan is
where we will be served.
We must all become people that serve now
so we can be served in the Akhirah.
بَارَكَ اللَّهُ لِوَلَكُمْ فِي الْقُرْآنِ الْحَكِيمِ وَلَفَعَلِي وَيِّيَكُمُ
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