For this reason the truly wakeful among its people are the worshippers, and the wisest of them are the ascetics. Allah the Exalted says: “The example of the life of this world is like rain We send down from the sky, by which the vegetation of the earth is mingled, from which people and cattle eat, until—when the earth has taken on its adornment and is beautified and its inhabitants think they have power over it—Our command comes to it by night or by day, and We turn it into stubble, as though it had not flourished the day before. Thus do We set out the signs for a people who reflect.” (Yunus 10:24). Verses on this meaning are many.

Indeed, Allah has perceptive servants:
They divorced the world and feared its trials.
They looked within it, and when they learned
That for the living it is no homeland,
They deemed it a vast sea
And took righteous deeds therein as their ships.

If this is the state of the world as I have described, and our condition, given the purpose for which we were created, is as I have set forth, then it is incumbent upon every accountable person to set himself on the course of the virtuous, to follow the path of those endowed with reason and insight, to prepare for what I have hinted at, and to give full concern to what I have drawn attention to.

The soundest way to do so—the most rightly guided path for all seekers—is to discipline oneself by what has been authentically reported from our Prophet, the leader of the first and the last, the noblest of those who came before and those who will come after. May Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him and upon the rest of the prophets. Allah the Exalted has said: “Cooperate in righteousness and piety” (Al-Ma’idah 5:2). It has been authentically reported from the Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) that he said, “Allah is in the servant’s aid so long as the servant is in his brother’s aid,” and that he said, “Whoever…"