 We begin by praising Allah swt as He is most worthy and deserving of all praise. We ask Allah and we ask Allah alone to guide us, to prevent us from being misguided and from misguiding others. We ask Allah swt to forgive us of our sins, our shortcomings, those sins that we commit knowingly and those that we commit unknowingly. We ask Allah swt to bless us with well-being, with help, with tranquility, amidst the chaos and we ask Allah swt to protect us individually and collectively as a community. We ask Allah swt finally to bless his noble Prophet, Allah swt, to bless his noble companions, the righteous everywhere. Ameen. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in a hadith that is reported by both Bukhari and Muslim. The Prophet tells us to take advantage of five things before those five things expire or leave so take advantage of five before five literally and these are the five things that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is telling us to be mindful of and to take advantage of. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam says that to take advantage of these five things before you lose them. Your youth before you become old, your youth before old age, your well-being, your health before you become sick, your wealth before you become poor or you lose that wealth, your spare time, your disposable and free time before you become busy and your life before your death, your life before you die. Now what's interesting as we reflect upon these five things is that three of those five things are directly related to time. Time. So in essence the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is telling us to take advantage of our time before we lose that time or as time evaporates disappears or we lose that time and it's interesting that in the Arabic language there are several words that are used and utilized to connote or denote time and in the Arabic language when there are a multiplicity of words or multiple words of a thing then it underscores or it gives us the importance the import of that of that word or of that concept or of that reality and so if we examine for instance with regards to the concept of time we have the word dhar in fact the Quran the Allah swt swears by dhar the idea of time or the this particular notion of time and dhar is like time that is faded faded the fate or the time that you have been given another word for time in Arabic is zaman which refers to a period or an epoch of time a period of time time another word for time in the Arabic language is waqt or measured time time that is measured minutes and hours and seconds and then of course there is asr which is literally time that is squeezed out of us because asr or asr means to be something that is squeezed right what do we call juice is the asir of the fruit when the fruit is squeezed that which comes out of it is the asir so time that is literally squeezed out of us and of course we know that Allah swt swears by this notion of time what asr Allah is swearing by this time that dissipates that disappears in that insana la fiqhosa and indeed man is in a state of loss and then finally another word for time is saa saa is the hour or an hour but here and more often than not when Allah swt or when we use the word saa it refers to the time of the day of judgment the time where all accounts are due and so as I said the Prophet ﷺ is commanding us to take advantage of five things before they disappear before we lose them and three of these five things are directly correlated to time but in essence one could one could say that all of these concepts have some sort of a time component to them so the first what the Prophet is telling us to do or to take advantage of before we lose it is our youth before we become old and as George Bernard Shah said that youth is wasted on the young right our youthfulness when we're young we're spirited we have energy we have passion and unfortunately a lot of that gets lost on young people because when we're young we're also foolish we also don't realize how important that period of time is how important that period of time is to form habits to develop the kind of human being the kind of person man or woman that we are going to be because oftentimes when we're young right we're heedless of time we're neglectful of taking advantage of the time that we have been given that that period of time of youth or young age where we have that energy that zeal that passion the abilities to learn new things to develop new habits and to develop and and to evolve into the type of human being that you will be for the rest of your life and so to take advantage of your youth before you become old this is something that I look in the audience I see many of us are old enough to probably have youth young children and so this is something that we should be reminding our own children is to take advantage of that very precious time I imagine all of us have some level of regret of not taking advantage of certain decisions or opportunities that we had or we were given when we were young and we can invent some sort of a time machine to go back in time and to speak to our younger selves we would and we would tell our younger selves to make right decisions to take advantage of that time of that young age and to develop into the kind of human being that you will be for the rest of your life and unfortunately one of the things as we get older that we have to live with and it is often a very difficult thing thing to live with and I would surmise and I would say that perhaps the most regretful thing or perhaps the most one of the things that we feel the most sense of remorse about is a sense of regret is that sense of not taking advantage of the time that we had when we were young when we had that passion and that zeal and unfortunately regret is one of the most difficult things to live with and so if we can't go back in time to tell and speak to our younger selves but we can certainly speak to those individuals those people that we have a sense of influence over who are young to take advantage of the opportunities that they have to take advantage of the time that precious youth to as I said to evolve and to develop the habits that will make them a better human being as they grow older and so regret and living with regret is one of those unfortunate byproducts as we get older and as we get older we have more things to be regretful for so the Prophet is telling us to take advantage of that youth before we become old the second thing that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is reminding us of and this is certainly timely and pertinent is our well-being our health before we become affirmed before we become infirm before we become sick and we know that the health that we've been given the abilities that come with having good health are not just related to physical aspects of life but they also have a very deep effect and a consequence on our spiritual lives as well because if we are vibrant if we are healthy we have the abilities we have the ability to worship Allah SWT you don't feel sluggish you aren't you aren't feeling a sense of malaise or tiredness because you're healthy you're healthy and so you can worship Allah SWT you can get up at night you can fast those voluntary fasts we're less than four months away from the month of Ramadan to build up our system to build up our health so that we can worship and we can sustain 30 days or 29 to 30 days of Ramadan and so the Prophet is telling us to take advantage of our of our health before we become sick and to speed up because of the essence of time again time being of essence the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam reminds us to take advantage of our wealth before we lose it and we all know brothers and sisters that the very nature of wealth is that it is it is just it leaves us wealth is something that depreciates depreciates depreciates in value that is the very essence of wealth itself even if the wealth is sitting in some bank somewhere it can have the potential to depreciate by market factors and so on and so that is the essence of this dunya of the wealth that we accumulate and we collect but to take advantage of what Allah has blessed us with with regards to our financial abilities before we lose that to be charitable to give to causes that are important that are important to us that are important to us individually and as a community so taking and take advantage of wealth or the financial resources that you have because there is no guarantee of tomorrow there is no guarantee that you will have those assets tomorrow to spend for righteous and good causes in the path of Allah SWT and then to take advantage of our spare time before we become busy and imagine again as we get older we realize that we wasted the opportunities that we had of disposable time that we are given by not learning new skills by not accumulating more knowledge by reading more spending more time in learning and discovery and so that comes with spare time that comes with the disposable time that we have because when we're busy we're busy we're consumed by work by family time and other obligations so your time becomes occupied and so the spare time that you have is a blessing from Allah SWT to become better human beings to better yourselves and so to take advantage of whatever spare and free time that we have before we become busy with life and finally this sort of summits summarizes everything to take advantage of life before death to take advantage of the days and the moments the time that Allah has given us before we breathe our last before we have no more time to do good deeds to worship Allah to spend time with our families and our friends and our community and so to take advantage of these things before we lose them is what the Prophet SAW is telling us and we know that this is the very nature of this dunya is that we lose these things if we don't take advantage of them so I pray that Allah SWT gives us all the abilities in the tofiq to take advantage of these things before we lose them waqeemu s-salat