Counting the Cost

I went to bed a couple nights ago with the promise of snow. Lots of Facebook friends in the area were getting snow. I kept peeking out at the very cold night. Not one flake of snow near me! Still, I went to bed thinking there was a chance I would wake up to streets milky white and thick with enough snow to cross-country ski on. However, there was not one flake of snow anywhere. It was bitter cold. Bitter cold without snow is just cruel.

I left upstate NY in order to flee the snow and ice and bitter cold. But I do love to cross-country ski, and have only done so a handful of times in the twenty years that I have lived in NC. Choices have consequences. Whenever we choose something, we are giving up something else. I hate that.

Jesus of course knows that, and warns us to make our choices carefully, counting the cost before we embark upon the uncertain world of choice. It always amazed me that He seemed to make that warning even when presenting the choice of eternal salvation in front of us. He does not mince words. He wants us to follow Him, but He doesn't pretend there is not a cost. Every choice has a cost. If we follow Jesus, we must disavow the world. He must be our world. It is near impossible for humans not to look back over their shoulder and wonder if the uncertain promise of eternal life with God is worth the certain pain and sorrow and glimpses of Joy that the world offers. I don't think the choice can be made purely on a human level. I think God Himself must intervene, and the wonder of Grace, is that He does.

I was a little sad that I woke up to no snow yesterday. I envied the northerners sending me pictures of their dogs playing in the snow. However, I won't be envying them in their fifth month of snow and ice and dirty drifts blowing across their frost bitten faces. Then I will think again how blessed I was to have made the choice to move from the known.

*************
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26-33 ESV)

-save a dog- hollowcreekfarm.org
http://www.amazon.com/Vicky-Kaseorg/e/B006XJ2DWU