A temporary loss of health is one of the great blessings Allah Almighty enables his servants to experience. When one falls ill, all worldly engagements involuntarily come to a standstill — engagements about which man normally imagines that they are unavoidable. Man comes to realise that after all he is not indispensable for the world, nor the world is indispensable for him. While a person is ill, he doesn’t enjoy the food and the drinks he normally does as a healthy person. It gives him a reason to thank Allah for the numerous blessings He has made available to him, as also the accompanying abilities with which he can properly benefit from them.
When illness gets more acute, one gets a real feeling of rubbing one’s shoulders with death. Thus one realises that death is a serious possibility. It is this experience that actually enables one to genuinely realise the folly of one’s over-involvement in the unnecessary worldly pursuits. The weakness of one’s body and the acuteness of illness all help in realising that when it will come to the time of departure from this world, no one will be able to come to the rescue of the departing soul. This near-death experience is indeed needed by all of us. And indeed it comes to our service on a fairly regular basis. How very unfortunate then that despite going through as thorough an experience as that of illness, we still find our worldly life so absorbing that we do not spare time to ponder seriously about our life-after-death?