Thursday, April 9, 2015

Count the Cost



I enjoy detective/legal mystery shows… though I must confess the formulaic tripe that gets churned out and aired these days has kept me from subscribing to cable/dish/satellite for the past two decades…

Anyhoo…

We’ve all seen the scene where Bob and his wife Sara-Mae are arguing about the renovations they are in the midst of. She’s wearing a tattered, once-colourful scarf wrapped around her dirty blond hair and telling him that on second thought maybe they shouldn’t take out that wall after all. He has curly brown hair a small paunch and is holding the handle of the sledge hammer he has just put through the wall they had agreed to remove.
“You couldn’t have said that sooner?” He asks
“I dunno, I just thought that… I dunno…”
He yanks the hammer out of the wall and turns to face her. His face is covered with dust but you can still clearly tell by his expression he’s about to blow his top. He already has the big breath needed to support the diatribe he’s about to unleash but her expression stops him cold.

He slowly turns to see what we (the viewer) have already noticed over his shoulder... the limp decomposing arm of some poor dead soul has fallen through the hole in the wall.

..cue some edgy, hip music as the show begins..

We’ve all been there right…

OK maybe you didn’t have an arm fall out of the wall but you know what I mean. You start work on a simple renovation but when the wall comes down there is black mold behind it and the $5000 renovation becomes $20 000. You decide to take the tile out of the bathroom (or kitchen) but when you have it down you discover that the tile was covering a massive hole in the wall.

We could take this in a bunch of different directions.  Let me suggest some possibilities…
1. We all have secrets… holes hidden behind the tile…
2. We all look good with our holes covered
3. Some of us have better tile than others…
4. Some like DIY renovations while others always hire a pro…
5. Some pros are shysters
6. When you decide to “renovate” make sure you have enough “money” in the bank for the unexpected.

In Luke 14 Jesus is teaching on this whole “count the cost thing”.  One bible inserts a break at verse 25 and adds the heading “The Cost of Being a Disciple”.  This is the point where Jesus talks about giving up everything and picking up a cross if we really want to be His disciple… that’s a little harsh so let’s skip that and get to the reasonable sections in verse 28 and following. 

In verses 28-33 Jesus gives some sound fiscal, management, planning, even battle advice by encouraging us to consider how much the change, how much the transition is going to cost before we start.

…of course as we start nodding our heads at His wisdom he drops the bomb again.  I suppose He meant it when He said it the first time…

“by the way… the cost to be my disciple is…  everything.” (Luke 14:33 PNWiV)

It’s a good thing the Bible is so hard to understand…

…just sayin…


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