Hebrews 11:25

Hebrews 11 is a chapter that works through a long list of people from the Hebrew scriptures who lived by faith in difficult circumstances. This verse is about Moses, one of the most important figures in the entire Bible. Moses was born a Hebrew slave but was adopted and raised inside Egypt's royal palace, with all the privilege and comfort that entailed. At some point, he made a deliberate choice to identify with his enslaved people rather than his powerful position. What makes this verse striking is its honesty: the author of Hebrews does not claim that the pleasures Moses walked away from were fake or empty. He simply notes that they were temporary — and Moses apparently decided that "for a short time" was the part that mattered most.

God, I want Moses's long view — the ability to see past what feels good right now to what actually matters. I confess that the short-term is often more convincing than it should be. Give me the kind of faith that can hold two things at once: what this moment costs, and what you have promised. Amen.

What makes this verse remarkable is not what it claims about sin's pleasures but what it doesn't. It doesn't say they were boring, or that Moses found them unappealing, or that it was an easy call. It says they were *short*. Moses apparently stood in the palace, looked at everything available to him — the comfort, the status, the version of life where none of this was his problem — and decided that "for a short time" was the phrase that changed everything. That required a kind of long vision most of us struggle with deeply. We are built for the immediate. The pleasure that is right in front of us almost always feels more real than the consequence that is still abstract. Most of us are not choosing between royal palaces and slavery. But we face smaller versions of Moses's exact choice more often than we'd like to admit — the shortcut that quietly costs someone else, the indulgence that slowly hollows something out, the comfortable numbness that is available if you simply stop asking the hard questions. What Moses had was a long view. He could see past the moment to what the moment was actually worth. That is not just a personality type — it is something you can ask God for. What short-term thing are you holding onto right now that, deep down, you already know isn't worth what it will cost you?