Worth It

25  Now great crowds accompanied him, and [Jesus] turned and said to them… 27  “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28  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? 29  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30  saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31  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? 32  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33  So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:25, 27-33

My husband was one of the Vietnamese boat people in the 1980s. Three times his family got him passage on a fishing boat, only to fail to escape. They knew that he was risking his life. Vietnamese refugees died in the South China Sea all the time—from bad weather, from pirates, or simply by drifting, lost, until they sank.

My husband knew his chances were not good; but he counted the cost of staying versus going, and concluded he was better off to try. And he did. And now he is an American citizen, and we have a family together, and a small church to care for. He figures it was worth it.

Jesus tells us to count the cost of becoming his disciples. What could we lose? What will we gain? Losses there will certainly be, though it’s hard to tell ahead of time exactly what. But what we will gain—ah, that is certain. We will gain a place in the family of God, forgiven, accepted, and at peace with the Lord. We will gain a family full of believers from around the world, people who love us and whom we love. And best of all, we will gain Jesus himself—our Savior, who loves us so much he suffered, died, and rose again to make us his own.

It's worth it, isn’t it?

Dear Savior, make me your own, and give me yourself. Amen.

By Dr. Kari Vo