Man’s Earnings

Man’s Earnings

1986 5 May 20 Man’s Earnings (392) This is a verse of the chapter of the Quran entitled “Al-Ahqaf’:

“On the day when the unbelievers are brought before the Fire, (We shall say to them):’You squandered away your precious things in your earthly life and took your fill of pleasure. An ignominious punishment shall be yours this day, because you behaved with pride without just cause on earth and committed evil.”

(Quran, 46:20)

Man has been endowed with certain faculties in this world. He has been invested with bodily strength, and blessed with intellectual prowess. He has been granted access to wealth, rank, resources and opportunities. All these human faculties are from God. He has given them to man for a purpose: that man should use them to earn something for himself.

There are two ways for man to “earn”. One is that which leads to what the Quran here calls “pride without just cause on earth and ..... evil.” But there is another form of earning, which is the very opposite of this one, and that is the earning of humility and graciousness from what one has. Let us put this another way. If a person is proud of what he has in this world; if he uses it for his own self-aggrandizement; if he makes it just a stepping stone to personal power: in all these cases he has wasted his energies. He has wasted them because he has expended them on this ephemeral world. What, the, can be left for him in the eternal world of God?

The other form of earning comes from seeing the resources with which we have been endowed in life as God’s gift. It is then that one sees one’s own helplessness before God, and lives in thanks giving to Him for His countless blessings. Instead of using one’s faculties and resources for personal ends, one devotes them to the service of God. Earnings gained in this way from the opportunities of life will stand one in good stead in the long run, for they will remain with one into eternity. One’s earnings will open out to one in the form of the everlasting gardens of paradise; there one will be able to taste the fruits of one’s earthly efforts.

Everyone has been given opportunities in this world; some are using them to earn the world, others to gain life everlasting.