Counting the cost
By the rivers of Babylon
Jesus does an odd thing for a man trying to gather a crowd. He tells them to do the math first. Which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not sit down and count the cost to see whether you can finish? He will not let anyone follow Him on a wave of feeling that has not reckoned with the price. Discipleship is a tower, and towers have a bill, and He would rather you count it now than abandon a half-built ruin later for everyone to mock. Upheaval has a bill too, and it always comes due. Centuries after that hillside, by the rivers of Babylon, the exiles learned exactly what their tower had cost. They sat down — the same posture Jesus named — and they wept, remembering the Zion they had lost. There is no pretending in that scene. No one tells them to cheer up because exile will work out for the good. They sit by the water and grieve what is gone, and the grief is not faithlessness. It is the honest invoice of an upheaval, read aloud and paid in tears. Scripture lets them weep without rebuke. It does not rush the mourning, and it does not pretend the loss was small.
“Which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn't first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it?”
— Jesus — Luke 14:28 (WEB)
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion.”
This is disconnect bleeding into disorientation — the break has happened, and now the bill arrives. The phase asks you to count the cost honestly and to grieve what it takes, without ever calling that grief a failure of faith. You are meant to sit by the river before you find the road.
Honor what your shaking costs. The relationships that will not survive it, the securities you cannot get back, the version of yourself you are losing and quietly loved — these are real losses, and you are allowed to sit down and weep for them. We are bad at this. We want the upheaval without the bill — the new life without grieving the old one, the deconstruction without the loss of the people who deconstructed differently, the move of God without counting what the move costs. And so we either refuse to begin, or we begin pretending it is free, and the unpaid grief ambushes us later with interest. Counting the cost is not the opposite of faith; it is faith with its eyes open.
You are allowed to sit down by the river. None of that mourning is unbelief. The exiles wept by the rivers of Babylon and were still God's people, their tears on the way to a return they could not yet see. Grieve plainly. Grieve the cost honestly. The upheaval that gets mourned is the one you can actually walk through; the one you pretend is painless is the one that breaks you in the dark.
A reforming Church pays real prices, and pretending otherwise wounds the grieving twice. In every great rummage sale people leave, treasured things are set down, and the old comfort dies even when the change is right. Whole traditions have wept by their own rivers of Babylon — mourning lost influence, lost certainties, a Christendom that is not coming back — and that grief is not faithlessness. Jesus told the crowd to count the cost before building the tower, and the Body is wisest when it reckons honestly with what its reformations take rather than rushing the mourning or minimizing the loss. The Church that grieves its cost out loud, before a watching world, is healthier for the honesty than the one that pretends the price was small.
The God who outlasts the bill. Everything the upheaval charges you was shakable; the One you are following through it is not. What cannot be shaken is that the cost, however steep, is paid toward Him — and He is worth the tower.
- What is this upheaval actually costing me, named plainly and not minimized?
- Am I pretending the loss is small to avoid the grief I am afraid to feel?
- Can I sit by the river and weep without calling my own tears a failure of faith?
Lord, I have been pretending this cost me nothing, and it has cost me much. Let me sit by the river and grieve what the shaking took, without calling my tears unbelief. Help me count the cost with open eyes, and follow You anyway, all the way to the far side. Amen.