"Is It Really Worth It?"

  All the talk. All the heartache. All choices we make. Why do we do what we do? Why did Israel do what they did? To send a people into a wilderness with nothing for forty years of wanderings for what? God sending Jesus, born of woman, to live some thirty-three years and die? All this pain. All this suffering.

  We turn to our present world and see so much suffering and pain. We reflect on the history and how God entered the history of man. We are faced it challenges and sometimes they are like mountains. People hurt one another. Violence is a daily occurrence. Innocent children are slain. What is God doing? What is God thinking?

  Here comes the apostle Peter. He failed so many times and his ultimate failure was the denouncing the Lord he had embraced and promised to die for. What pain must have entered his heart. But these words he pens inspired by the Spirit: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you." (I Pet. 1:3-4) 

  Since God has gone to such great lengths both in the past and through Jesus Christ, there has to be something grand, something wonderful beyond description awaiting us. An inheritance of such magnitude that human words can't explain it! God subjected His people to a severe wilderness with one thought in mind: 'My plan is to bring you home!' All the punishments of Israel, the trials people went through was not forever. 

  Here we are and our trials, our difficulties are not forever. Home, home with God is forever. A place of only the dwelling of God, never mixed with evil or any corruption. In the presence of God where we find imperishable and undefiled qualities that will never fade with the using. We look around us and see corruption. We listen to God's voice through His word and He speaks what He has accomplished for us through Jesus. The only question we must ask ourselves: Is it really worth it?