What Awaits a Believer in the Hereafter

The journey of the hereafter is fascinating.
There is one stage however, that as a Muslim is worrying.
This is the day of judgement being fifty thousand years as per the verse:

تَعْرُجُ ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةُ وَٱلرُّوحُ إِلَيْهِ فِى يَوْمٍۢ كَانَ مِقْدَارُهُۥ خَمْسِينَ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍۢ

“The angels and the holy spirit will ascend to Him on a Day fifty thousand years in length” (70:4)
What’s the issue? Though as Muslims we can’t guarantee anything, the Nusus (sacred texts) have given glad tidings to the believers of a swift journey, but this verse indicates the opposite.
For example, If Allah accepts from us, our death will be swift and as easy ‘ as a water drop flows from a water-skin’ (Ahmed – Saheeh).
The grave will be expanded and the believer will sleep with the angel informing him: ‘Sleep like the bridegroom who will be woken by none except the closest of his family,’ (Tirmidhi – Hasan).
When you sleep at night for seven hours, does it feel like seven hours? No, not at all. You are oblivious. If we are put to sleep in our graves, it could be that hundreds and thousands of years pass and we won’t feel it until the trumpet is blown.
Fast forward to Jannah, well that’s eternity inshAllah. So coming back now to the issue – do we have to wait fifty thousand years before entering paradise!?
Until recently, I just accepted it as it was (I won’t go into the interstellar explanations) until I came across a hadith of the Prophet (saws) which is considered sound by a number of scholars:

عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ قَالَ يَقُومُ النَّاسُ لِرَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ مِقْدَارَ نِصْفِ يَوْمٍ مِنْ خَمْسِينَ أَلْفَ سَنَةٍ فَيَهُونُ ذَلِكَ الْيَوْمُ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِ كَتَدَلِّي الشَّمْسِ لِلْغُرُوبِ إِلَى أَنْ تَغْرُبَ

“The people will stand before the Lords of the worlds for the length of half of a day which is like fifty thousand years. That day will be made easy for the believer like the sun lowering itself until it has set.” (Sahih ibn Hibban).
Another hadith sheds further light, mentioning how the day of judgement ‘will be lightened for the believer, until about the length of an obligatory prayer he prayed’ (Ahmed).
When you put these two together: a sunset or the length of a prayer, it indicates that the standing of believers will be *very short*. We’re talking minutes, or even up to half a day.
There are a lot of explanations and narrations for the above which can’t be given justice in a short post, but many scholars considered the fifty thousand year length specific to the disbelievers as a form of punishment. The believers on the other hand, will inshAllah have a swift reckoning, meaning that from the point of death, all the way up to our final abode Jannah – it *could* be much closer than we think.