Fear & Hope

I was standing before water pot put on fire - it was boiling. I saw the bubbles develop slowly but at a fast pace, and i shrank into meditation. I recalled category A industries our professor was telling us about, which operate at temperatures above 5000 degree Celsius. I shrugged at very thought of boiling tea water touching human skin, too painful to imagine, let alone of 5000 degree Celsius. Again i was reminded of what our scholars and pious men and women tell us about when they recite Qur'an and narrate Prophetic hadith - about the destiny of man. There are three different destinies that all of us would share: heaven (inshaAllah), hell, and a neutral place between the two. I thought, looking at boiling water reaching its climax, how to better to fear hell. Fear of one object is better than all fears of this world, which in fact is the fear of one Rabb... Make your deal...

It is very urgently important to mention a fallacy many good Muslims sometimes fall into: they are told not to fear hell, portraying it as human weakness, in fact the perpetrators of such fallacies make fun of those who fear hell and hope for paradise. Some Muslims, unfortunately, are moved by such profane arguments, which are in fact sentimental in nature, and have you reality attached to it.