Tonight before dinner I talked with our guests about how following Jesus has a cost. There will be friends who are no longer your friends, places where you will no longer be welcome. I talked about how the Kingdom of God has a completely different currency than the world, about how the things that matter most to us in the world are meaningless in the kingdom.

Count the cost.

I remember, perhaps 20 years ago, someone telling me that there's no way they would become a Christian if that meant they couldn't have a glass of wine with dinner. I had no clue what to say. A number 0f years ago I trashed my entire cd collection, believing I should only listen to "Christian" music. I have no idea why that mattered so much. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't do this and don't do that - they were badges of honour that I proudly wore, so glad to count the cost.

Count the real cost.

Tonight I spoke with the guy who used to be "The Drunk Guy Who Calls Me Pastor". He's entering his third, miraculous week of sobriety, but can only sleep three hours a night. Four  o'clock in the morning is the loneliest time in the world, all the more so when you spend the hours staring down the devil. For this guy, every night is another Gethsemane. I talked with a woman who lost her mother, three months ago to the day. I tried to talk her into having a meal, because she hasn't eaten, and going home and getting some sleep, because some idiot in her rooming house kept her up all night. I spoke with a guy whose new medication is sapping the life out of him, and he's no longer certain that being free of his seizures is worth feeling like this. What's it like to face that kind of choice? It seems to me that surely part of the cost has to be that a brother hurts when a brother is hurting. Part of it has to be that we carry some of the pain of the world in our arms, that we carry our brothers and sisters in our hearts, that we long for the love of God to be made real in the brokenness that surrounds us, that we wrestle and struggle and grapple and tussle and argue with God to see his kingdom come.

Because if that isn't the cost we're paying to follow Christ, then what are we doing?