Iron & Altar

"Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost?" - Luke 14:28

Jesus tells a great crowd, following him for whatever reason crowds follow a popular man, that none of them has actually counted what following him will cost. A builder who starts a tower without the funds to finish it becomes a joke to everyone who watches the half-built thing stand there, brother. A king who marches to war without checking whether his ten thousand can face the other side's twenty thousand sends a delegation asking for terms instead.

Charles Borromeo, remembered today, spent his life on exactly this kind of counting - reforming clergy formation after the Council of Trent, insisting that a man who would carry the faith to others had to be properly formed first, not just willing. Willingness was never the missing ingredient. Preparation was.

A steward who has never counted the real cost of his own faith is building on assumption, not on ground he's actually tested. Paul's first reading gives the corrective tone for the counting: work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for God is the one who is at work in you. Fear and trembling, not because the outcome is in doubt, but because the stakes are real and a man who treats them casually has not yet understood what he's actually building.

Sit down tonight and actually count something you've been assuming rather than examining - what following Christ has genuinely cost you this year, and what it's likely to cost going forward. Write down one honest number or one honest sentence.

Lord, I have followed you on assumption more than I have followed you on counted cost. Let me build with fear and trembling, and let you be the one at work in the building. Amen.