Minute with a Muslim #350 – Four Blessings of Paradise

About Us, for Hani also breaks up the blessings of gender into four categories and says all the blessings of gender, which we can't possibly wrap our mind around or, you know, comprehend in an exhaustive way. But he says you can think about them, or you can organize it in your mind by seeing them through four categories,

or four principal kinds of things, right. So one of them is, obviously life without death. And this is turning life on its head, at least the life that we know in this world, because in this world, we don't know life except through death. That's the only way that we know life and death are inherently tied to each other. Even the process of giving life of giving birth is something that takes a woman close to death, like women die in childbirth all the time. Right.

So to take it, and then this thing that

part of what gives us value for our lives is that it's short, and that it's finite, and it's going to end. And so that's what makes it precious. Well, in the afterlife, everything's kind of rearranged and flipped on its head. And so now we have life without death. And this is the very, very new type of blessing.

Were sort of everyone, all your anxieties, you know, a lot of us have anxieties about dying, we don't want to talk about death, we don't want to talk about getting old, we don't want to talk about

these sorts of things while we're here on Earth. So all of those sorts of anxieties and fears are wiped away. Now you have life without the prospect of death. And so it's this kind of complete, not just external security from death, but also the internal peace, where you're not anticipating death, you're not afraid of losing the life that you have.

The next, the next type of blessing, he says is ability without weakness, right. So every single ability we have in this life, it's got a, it's got a limit, right? So you can think about going to the gym, if you're gonna lift weights, okay, there's you, and then there's the super ripped guy next to you. And you know, he lifts a lot more than you do. But at the end of the day, each of you has a limit, like there's a limit that humans can't go beyond,

well, that sort of thing is going to be lifted in gender. So you're going to have ability, without any sort of limit to what you can do. So this is something that is very satisfying. And this is why it's only reserved for gentlemen, because your intentions have been purified, you're not going to misuse this thing. And it's going to be a source of, of enjoyment and satisfaction for you.

The next blessing of the afterlife, it has to do with

there's wealth without without poverty, right. And so

in this life, our wealth is something that's very, very tenuous, and very, very fragile. Right? If you get your paycheck, it's gone real quick, you have bills to pay, you've got this sort of thing or whatever. And we live through the pandemic, we can tell that things are very, very,

not stable or permanent, right permanence is not meant for this life, your jobs here today, it's gone tomorrow, the company closes up, or they let you go, or the whole sector shifts, sometimes, you know, the entire industry rises and falls and you have nothing to do with it. This is the way that history unfolds. So in the afterlife, the wealth that you have is permanent, and it doesn't have you don't have to be afraid that it's going to be snatched away from you, or that it's going to be removed from you in any sort of way. And then the last type, the last type is knowledge without ignorance. And this is a really interesting one, because our knowledge and this life is very, very,

very limited. We're born as a law says knowing nothing. And by the time we die, we know just about as little as when we came into this world. And in between our knowledge is extremely puny and partial, right? Like even just the field of our vision. Only can see less than 180 degrees. I can't see what's going on behind me right now. How am I going to be able to see what's going to happen in the future? How am I going to be able to assess the decisions that I make today? Are they really the best decisions for me and my family and what I want and it's all just you know, little more than guesswork. So once we get to the afterlife, you know, having knowledge without ignorance, Allah

tells us multiple times in the Quran that he's going to show us like the real reasons why we did things he's going to reveal to

Ask that we will know. Right? And so we'll have sort of this perfect knowledge without ignorance when it came to our motivations, right? And why we did the things that we did and what was the real nature of reality, and all these sorts of things.

And one of the best sort of things that are tucked into that type of satisfaction, the afterlife is seen a lot. Right as the prophets of the law even some said that

one of the

best blessings of making it to the afterlife is seeing a lot for ourselves, which is kind of a symbol of this knowledge without the ignorance in this life. We believe in Allah without seeing him because we can't see him and even if we could, it would defeat the purpose of faith in the first place. Whereas in the afterlife now, we're granted this kind of certainty that we weren't granted in this life.