At Death’s Door

At Death’s Door day be brought to stand before Death’s door. At that moment, the world will be behind him, and in front of him will be the everlasting Hereafter. He will be leaving a world that he will never visit again and will be entering a world that he will never be able to come out of. He will be removed from the field of action and taken to where he will have to face the eternal consequences of his actions while he was on earth. Life is an unreliable thing, whereas death is absolutely certain. We are alive only because we have not died as yet. And we do not know when death will happen. Every moment, we are advancing towards death. We are closer to death than to life. People think that they are alive, but actually they are dead. We have no idea of when death will arrive. It can arrive at any moment. In fact, it actually keeps arriving at every moment, and so, it is more appropriate to say that it has already arrived, rather than to say that it will arrive sometime in the future. This is why a saying of the Prophet Muhammad tells us to count ourselves among the dead, or the ‘people of the graves’. Death nullifies everything. It is the most serious event of our lives. If death were simply the end of life, it would not be that significant. If death only meant that we would no longer exist as beings that walk, see and hear, it would, despite all its terrors, be simply an event that occurs at a particular moment, rather than an issue with eternal implications. But the fact is that death is not the end of our lives. Rather, it is the beginning of a new and eternal life. Death means entry into a world