The certainty of future goods versus the uncertainty of present ones

How then is it not absurd that in the affairs of this life we look at what is unseen before what is visible, and endure labors before the wages, and first bear all the hardships and only then expect the good that comes from them, and are stirred by hopes of unseen things to take hold of visible things in this way—yet when it comes to God we hesitate and doubt, and demand the rewards before the labors, and show ourselves more fainthearted than farmers and sailors? For we will appear worse than them not only in this respect, by being impatient about the future, but also in another respect no less than this. What is that? They, even when they cannot be entirely confident about the outcome, still do not abandon their labors; but you, though you have a trustworthy guarantor of the crowns, still do not imitate their endurance. The farmer, after casting the seed and tending the ground and seeing the crops flourishing, often loses the reward of his labors when hail or blight or locusts or some other such blow falls on them, and after his many sweats returns home with empty hands. And the merchant again, after crossing a great expanse of sea with his cargo ship fully loaded, often strikes a rock just at the mouth of the harbor when winds rush in, and barely escapes with his life, naked. And in all the affairs of this life, many such disasters often happen right at the end. But in your contests this is not so. The one who has contended, who has sown godliness and borne many labors, must by all means attain the end. For God has not entrusted the rewards of these labors to the unevenness of the air or the force of the winds, but they are stored up in the heavens, in inviolable treasuries. This is why Paul also said, "Affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces provenness, and provenness produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame" (Romans 5:3-5). So do not say that the things to come are unseen. For if you are willing to examine carefully, they are far more visible than the things in hand. And Paul, showing us this very thing again, calls the one things eternal and the other things temporary, revealing their corruptibility by the word "temporary." For before it appears it flies away, and it runs off before it arrives, and its changes are swift, and its possession is untrustworthy. One may see this happening with wealth and glory and power, and with beauty of body, and with strength and with all the other affairs of this life. This is why the prophet, mocking those who live in luxury and rage after money and all the rest of the illusion, says, "They considered these things as standing, and not as fleeing." For just as it is impossible to grasp a shadow, so it is with the affairs of this life. Some are dissolved by death, and others flow away even before death, more swiftly than any winter torrent. But the things to come are not like this. They know no change, they admit no turning, they do not understand old age, they have no alteration, but they flourish continually and remain in the same beauty. So if one must call anything unseen and uncertain and untrustworthy, it is the present things that should be called so—things that do not remain with those who possess them, but change masters and leap every day from this person to another, and again from that one to another.