What if?

What if you found out that you were the heir to a great inheritance and  all you had to do was travel to the benefactor's estate to claim your inheritance?  You would be so excited!  You would dream about the future.  You would live in joyful anticipation for what was ahead.  You would tell all your friends about your good fortune.

BUT what if your car broke down on the way there and you had to ride the bus?  Or walk? 
What if the road was long?  Or bumpy?  Or hot? 
What if your feet hurt? 

Would you cry over your broken car? 
Would you sit down and refuse to go any farther because it was too painful?
Would you give up and say "Forget it. It's too hard to get there.  It takes too long."
I don't think so.
If you knew what was waiting for you, you would do whatever it took to get there. 
You would think about what was ahead of you and not what you had to leave behind.
You would press on.
You would not quit.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.  In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:3-7)

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 3:12-14)