The Man and the Snake

A man returns home from his shop on a winter night and finds his wife and children sitting in the veranda. He asks them surprizingly, "why are you sitting in the veranda in this cold weather?" His wife replies, a long black snake has entered the room in the evening.

The man then enters the room with a big stick and searches everywhere for the snake, but couldn’t find it. The wife says, I have seen the snake entering the room with my own eyes, and the children bear witness to it.
Upon hearing this, the man enters the room again and takes out everything from the room until the room is completely empty. Then he searches everything thoroughly and keeps it back in the room one by one, but still there is no sign of any snake.
He consoles his wife and children saying that the snake might have left the house from this drain and you might not have seen it go out. Hearing this, their fear is curtailed and they enter the room.

Now they have their dinner as usual and prepare to sleep. The man sits on his bed and starts checking his shop’s account. Suddenly he sees his shirt which was hanging on the wall moving slightly even though the fan is off due to cold and doors and windows are tightly shut. He thinks that the snake is hiding behind the shirt. Terrified, the man takes a stick and touches his shirt. Then he shakes it vigorously with the stick, but there is no snake. He picks up the shirt and hangs it inside the cupboard and returns to his bed.

Now he feels he is not interested in the shop’s account. So he switches the lights off and lies on his bed. He alone was awake in the house and everyone else had slept already. Suddenly the empty cup on the cupboard falls down on the floor. He again imagines the snake curled on top of the cupboard. He switches on the light while sitting on the bed itself. Then stands on his place and looks at the cupboard.

Once again he takes up courage and searches the room for the snake, but to no avail. Tired, he lies down again for sleeping without switching off the light this time.

To his astonishment, whenever he closes his eyes, he sees a long black snake in front of him. He opens his eyes out of fear. He spends his whole night turning from one side to other and could not sleep due to the fear of the snake…

His wife had informed him of a snake entering the room due to which he searched the room thrice but couldn’t find any trace of a snake. His wife might have lied to him, and used to lie at him sometimes. But believing in her report, he scanned the room thrice and could not sleep due to fear. Any small sound would make his hairs stand on their ends.

But the most truthful of all, our Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam has seen with his own eyes and informed us of various stages in the Hereafter. Let alone Jannat, Jahannum, Sirat, the Day of Resurrection, the Punishment of the Grave, etc and let alone the Power of Allah, His hidden Treasure, and His hidden System (of governing everything), if we only take the report that every human has two angels (Kiraman Katibeen) on their shoulders who record each and every deed; how many of our nights were spent sleepless due to the fear of these Kiraaman Kaatibeen?

Just due to the report of his wife seeing a snake he spent his whole night in fear, how many nights have we spent in fear due to these angels informed by our Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam? Let alone spending sleepless nights, how many times did we ever think of these angels continously monitoring us and our hairs have stood on their ends?