“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
Luke 14:28-30 NIV
We are thinking about buying a new home! How exciting. My wife and I find ourselves swinging between excitement and fear. Our current house is small, but life here is familiar and safe. Now, we are contemplating stepping into the unknown. There is a risk in doing that. It is important for us to not let the excitement sweep us away. In our dreaming, we can’t abandon critical thinking. As Luke 14:28-30 teaches, it is important to sit down and calculate the cost before you begin. Our decision-making process has involved a lot of math. Do we have the money for this? That? Is there a margin of safety? Have we taken everything into account? Since we can’t afford everything we might like, what are the most important things? Lists. Charts. Research. Nightly conversations with updates, backtracks, and estimates. Have you heard the expression, “Look before you leap?” That is what we are trying to do.
Our kids have had a front-row seat to all of these conversations. I hope they have seen the process of calculating risk before stepping into something new. Soon, they too will be grown and will need the skills to make life-altering decisions. That’s why we have included them in most of our conversations. They need to see decision-making in action before they can do it themselves. When they launch, almost every step they take will be new, confusing, or risky. Our goal is that they will be able to calculate the landing before they jump.
On the other side of risk-taking is fear. For nearly twenty years we have not moved due to fear. I am a dreamer, so I think of three interesting ideas before breakfast every morning. Fear kicks in when I share them with my wife and she puts the brakes on them. This is not a bad thing. It has prevented us from making impulsive mistakes, so far. But fear of change can also be dangerous. It can cause us to make poor decisions. It can cause us to do nothing when action is needed. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it should be resisted. If we operate from this mindset, we grow rigid and brittle. It’s not healthy, because life is fluid and dynamic. Like an earthquake, it will force us to move whether we desire to or not. Injuries. Job changes. Economic emergencies. Family crises.
We must not let ourselves elevate stability and sameness into some sort of idol. When we worship comfort, predictability, and routine, our faith in God’s provision grows fragile. We will clamp down every variable and control everything. First of all, this is exhausting. Life does not cooperate with our desire for predictability. We will exhaust ourselves in trying, but secondly, there may soon come a time when the ability to adapt is the key to our survival. Let’s build the skill now, so we will have it when it is required.
