Take Advantage of Five before Five
قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ اغْتَنِمْ خَمْسًا قَبْلَ خَمْسٍ شَبَابَكَ قَبْلَ هَرَمِكَ وَصِحَّتَكَ قَبْلَ سَقَمِكَ وَغِنَاكَ قَبْلَ فَقْرِكَ وَفَرَاغَكَ قَبْلَ شُغُلِكَ وَحَيَاتَكَ قَبْلَ مَوْتِكَ
The Messenger of Allah was giving a man an admonition one day, He said: Take advantage of five before five. Your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your wealth before your broke, your free time before your busy, your life before your death.
Benefits from this topic:
Al-Hafith Al-Hakimee said: This is an encouragement to do as many actions as you can do you when have your youth, your good health, your wealth, your free time and your life. When these things are gone there’s no benefit to have hope that you can do actions. After young age comes old age, following good health comes sicknesses, once the wealth is gone its poverty, and after free time you get busy and occupied and lastly after life comes death.[1]
- Take advantage…The Arabic word used is [اغتنم] which means to be successful without difficulty[2]
- Five before five… This means we do fives things before five things happen.[3]
- Your youth before your old age…Take advantage of your youthfulness with worship and obedience to Allah while you have the ability and before you have regret for your negligence. [4] Young age is a period activity when the body is strong and able to worship Allah. Be mindful that youthfulness disappears quickly. It’s similar to a dream that a person doesn’t feel remorseful for until he wakes up.[5]
- your health before your illness…Do actions while you are in good health ,because the sickness might prevent you from doing good deeds, and if you have few deeds in this life you will arrive on Judgment day with a small number of deeds.[6]
- your wealth before your broke…Use your extra wealth you have towards charity before you need charity and become poor. Wealth comes and goes. Sometimes a wealthy person becomes poor again.
- your free time before your busy…Free time is always followed by becoming busy. The Prophet [(ﷺ)]
نِعْمَتَانِ مَغْبُونٌ فِيهِمَا كَثِيرٌ مِنَ النَّاسِ الصِّحَّةُ وَالْفَرَاغُ
‘Two blessings which many people misuse: Good health and free time.’”[7]
Make use of your free time in this World before you become busy with the terrors of the Hereafter. The grave is the first place of the Hereafter. Therefore, do deeds now that protect you when you get busy
- your life before your death…Do actions that will benefit you after death. Death seizes all actions, all hope is gone, and then regret kicks in.
The Prophet named these five as Ghaneemah, because it’s easy to do actions when they are present. The true value of these five things isn’t recognized until they vanish.
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The hadith is collected in (9575 شعب الإيمان للبيهقي الحادي والسبعون من شعب الإيمان ) graded as Sahih by Imam Al-Albani
[1] Ma-arij AlQabul vol,2,pg 870
[2] An-Tanweer vol,2,pg523
[3] Faydul Qadeer vol,2,21
[4] Ibid
[5] At-Tanweer.
[6] Faydul
[7] Al-bukhari