Sleep Sleep....

The Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “Sleep is the brother of death, and the inhabitants of Paradise do not die.” [Mishkat]

Sleep is a requirement of a healthy mind and body. When a Muslim sleeps with the intention of waking up refreshed to serve Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) then his/her sleep also counts as worship. Excess of sleep though means that time is wasted that could be better spent in earning higher ranks of Jannah.

Everybody must have experienced this at one time or another that when we are enjoying ourselves immensely the last thing we want to do is leave all the fun and go to sleep. Eventually though, even if we manage to stay up all night, we have to catch up on sleep. There is no such thing as endless fun on earth.

This is one of the beauties of Jannah that there is no tiredness, no night and no sleep. We will be having so much fun that we won’t want to go to sleep ever and we won’t need to either. Hard for us to imagine, constrained as we are by our earthly experience and limitations!

Since sleep is a type of death, we should also make sure that our last words and thoughts before we go to bed are such that should we die in our sleep the last thing we did is seek Allah’s forgiveness, ask for His Jannah and seek refuge from the Fire.