 All praise is due to Allah who guided us to this and we would not be able to bear it if we did not bear it by Allah. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon our Master, Beloved, our Master Muhammed, and our people and my companions. May the Lord marry my brother and send my mother to him and accept him together in his company. Respected brothers and sisters, we begin by praising Allah swt. God Almighty, as He is most worthy and deserving of our praise. And we ask Allah and we ask Allah alone to guide us, to prevent us from being misguided and from misguiding others. We ask Allah to keep us safe and healthy and our community safe and healthy, our families, our loved ones and the society at large. We ask Allah Subhanu wa Ta'ala to bless his noble Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah, Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam, to bless his noble companion and his family and the righteous everywhere. I mean, Allah Ta'ala, God Almighty in the Quran exposes to us and tells us and informs us of conversations that will occur in the life hereafter, in the Akhira. And in the Quran, there are many of these conversations that we are informed of. There are conversations between Ashab-u-Nar, wa Ashab-u-Jannah, between those who dwell, the dwellers of Paradise and the dwellers of the Hellfire. We are also informed by Allah about conversations that occur or that will occur between Allah, God Almighty and the inhabitants of the Hellfire, those who will find themselves in the afterlife in damnation and punishment for the life that they live. And one such conversation that I want us to reflect on today, brothers and sisters, is one that is found in Surat al-Mu'minoon which is the 23rd chapter of the Quran in which Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says, Qala qam labithum fil ardi adid an sinin. He will say, God will say, how long did you dwell in this earth? How long do you think that you dwell, that you lived in this world, in this life? And he's asking and he's talking to those who find themselves in punishment and in Akhira in the Hellfire. And they will say, Qalu labathna yawman or ba'ada yawman fa'salu ad-da'in, al-a'a-deen. Allah the response that Allah receives from these inhabitants of the Hellfire is that perhaps we dwelled on the earth a day or maybe a portion of a day, ask those who keep account of these things. They don't know for sure but what they do know is that it felt like a day or perhaps a portion of a day. And the conversation continues and Allah affirms that, that you were here, that you lived this life for fleeting moments of time. But I want us to pause and reflect on that exchange that we mentioned here from Surat Al-Mu'minun, that conversation that occurred or that will occur, that the people, the dwellers of the inhabitants of the Hellfire and frankly Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala asking anyone, potentially any one of us, how long did you live this world, in this world? How long was your existence, your life as you knew it? And we will all potentially respond by saying, perhaps a day or maybe a portion of a day. Because that is how we as human beings assess and interpret time. The last time that I was here for khutbah, I just so happened to be talking about in a different context this idea of time. And there we mentioned that or we discussed that in our tradition there are multiple words that are employed for time. In the Qur'an, time as a concept is referred to by many different words or expressions. And in the Arabic language when there are multiplicity of words for one thing, it underscores the importance of that idea, that concept, waqt, dahr, asr, zaman. These are all words that employ or refer to time and they're employed in the Qur'an and in the prophetic teachings of the Prophet ﷺ. Time is of importance because we as human beings, brothers and sisters, are temporal beings, that idea of a temporal existence, which means that we live a life that is defined and that is in time, that is defined by time and is in time. And the very notion of temporal makes us think of what? Temporary, because this world is ephemeral, is temporary, that is the essence, that is the nature of Hayat al-Dunya, of the life of this world, is that the life of this world is temporal. The akhira is everlasting, the afterlife is everlasting, but yet this temporal existence, this temporary existence has consequences for the life hereafter, for all of eternity. But those who study time, they talk about time or how we analyze time in one of two ways. There is what is known as prospective time and there is what is known as retrospective time. Prospective time is time that you live right now. If I ask you, if I put you in a room that has no clock, that has no window, and I ask you to tell me when a minute has expired, most of us would probably do a pretty good job, a pretty accurate job of telling us when a minute has transpired. But if I put you in that same room and ask you to tell me when 10 years has expired, you would have a more difficult time. This is that idea of prospective time and retrospective time. Another example of prospective versus retrospective time is imagine most of us who are over 40 years old can think of their last decade that they lived as seeming to have transpired so quickly. Where did the last 10 years of my life go? Where did my 40s go if you're in your 50s? Where did my 50s go? Some of us who are younger probably will have a little bit more of a difficult time. And that's not because time is being measured differently or is passing differently. A decade is still a decade for a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, or a 40-year-old, or a 40-something year old. But what is different is how we retrospectively look at time. My 20s felt like a decade. My 30s and now my 40s seem to pass far more quickly. Because of how, of the events that have transpired, how much I have changed in a decade versus how much I changed as a teenager or as a 20-something year old. And that's again how we look and analyze and conceptualize time. And I want us all, brothers and sisters, as an exercise, and I'm going to conclude with this, is to, I imagine that all of us unfortunately have lost someone that we care very dearly about, whether it's a parent, grandparent, a sibling, child perhaps, tragically. But regardless, all of us have experienced loss. I can reflect on the loss of my father, someone that I spent 40 years almost of my life with until he passed away. He lived to the age of 62 years old. I spent, as I said, 40 years of my life with my father. You think of someone that you have lost, someone that you spent time with. And if I were to ask all of us to take inventory to journal all of the memories that you have of that person, all of the life experiences that you experienced with that person, the advice that they gave you, the experiences that you shared, how they ate their food, how they spoke their voice even. If I think about my father, I would be hard-pressed. I would find it difficult if I were asked to writing that journal to maybe come up with a month of time as we know it, right? 30 days, 24 hours each day. I would be difficult to try and journal 40 years of my life with this person that I lived. And I can't even come up with a month in terms of the advice, the life experiences, the memories that I have of that person. And that, brothers and sisters, right there is the nature of this world, is the nature of this life. It is that conversation that we spoke of in Surat al-Mu'minu. How long do you think you lived? A day? Maybe a portion of a day? Because that's how time passes us. You think about a loved one. How long did you spend with that person? A day? Maybe a portion of a day. And so we can't do anything, brothers and sisters, about retroactive time, time that has already passed, time that has already transpired, those that we have lost. What we can do and that we must do, because it has bearing of our, for our afterlife, for the life of eternity, for a life that is not temporal, for a life that is unending, is that we have to take account and be mindful of prospective time, time right now moving forward. How do you live your day to day life right now? The relationships that you have, the time that you spend with loved ones, right? It should haunt us that the task that we had of thinking of a loved one and the memories that we have, those, that task, maybe something that your children will have to do. My father is no longer with me, right? They'll think 20 years from now, 30 years from now, tomorrow, who knows? And they'll think of the life that you've left behind, the legacy that you left behind, the experiences, the wisdom, the advice you gave them. And they too will say, how long did I spend with my father, with my mother? A day? Maybe a portion of a day? And so each and every one of us can only make use of prospective time, time moving forward, and how we choose to live our day to day life, the moments that Allah has blessed us with right now. What is the legacy that we leave behind? What are those experiences? What are those relationships? What is the advice that we have instilled in others? What is the legacy that you will leave behind? What bearing will that have on your life in the hereafter? What bearing will that have in that conversation with our Lord? How long did you live in this world? What did you do in this world? That was a consequence. That was a meaning that left a true legacy to those that are left behind. So I pray and I hope that we all reflect on and cherish the moments that we have each and every moment with our loved ones, with our community, with the opportunities that we have to make the most of each and every existence, to turn to Allah and to foster that relationship, that is the most meaningful relationship with our Lord and our Creator. I pray that Allah SWT gives us topique, keeps us safe, healthy as a community and as individuals. Ya ayyua ladina aman attaqullah haqqa tuqatihi wa la tamutunna illa wa anta muslimun. Ya ayyua nasi taqurabbakum al-lady khalaqakum min nafsin wahida wa khalaqa min hazzawjahat wa batha minhum a rijalan kathirun wanisa'a wa attaqullah ladida sa'aluna bihi wa la rham. Inna Allaha kana aalaykum rakiba. Ya ayyua ladina aman attaqullah wa inna anta maulana kansurun aalil qawmin kathirin. Ya muqalibu l-kulub fadid kuluban aaladinik. Allahumma inna nas'aluka ridakabu l-jannah. Wan'audu bikka min saqibida wannaf. Subhana rabbika rabbil izzati ama yusifoon. Wa salamun aalil mursaleen. Wa alhamdulillahi rabbil aalineen wa aqeemu al-salah.