Towers and salt

If you set out to build a tower, first make sure you have the materials to see the job through.

This was one of the word-pictures Jesus painted to illustrate the cost of following him.

What did he mean?

Surely he did not mean the cost of salvation itself, because that cost can only be paid by Jesus alone.

So what does the tower, the materials, and the staying power for seeing the project through, mean?

The tower represents a visible expression of the invisible faith of one's salvation. Building the tower gives a life of faith a certain orderliness and coherence -- one that could be seen, felt, handled. Because one is building his tower, costs have been counted, efficiencies have been calculated, priorities have been set.

I know a person -- a single woman -- who some years ago went to a faraway part of the world to be a missionary. In a short few years, she learned not one, but two, dialects spoken in that region. She came to consider this faraway place her home. This past year she returned to the US to get additional training. But while in the US, political unrest in that faraway place resulted in her being denied entry back.

What does she do? She went back anyway -- on a tourist visa, hoping to extend her stay while on the ground there.

I look at her life and I see she is building a tower. Costs have been counted, efficiencies calculated, priorities set.

I am reminded of Paul who, on his way to Jerusalem, was given a prophecy -- a prophecy -- that he shouldn't go. He went anyway.

It was because going to Jerusalem was part of the tower Paul was building: the visible expression of the invisible faith of his salvation.

You say what's the difference between that and just being bullheaded? A prophecy was given that he shouldn't go. And he went anyway. Isn't that just stubbornness?

Well it may look like that. But Jesus concluded his word-picture of building the tower by saying this: What good is salt if it has lost its saltiness?

My friend the missionary, and Paul, were not being stubborn. They were just being salty.

Salt preserves.

Salt gives taste.

Salt melts the ice away.

If we only claim invisible faith, but have no tower we are building to show for it ... then there is no saltiness either.

And Jesus said: What good is salt without the saltiness?

So, what tower are you building?

Logos2Go

Luke 14.28-30, 33-35 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? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ ... 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Acts 21.10-13 While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul's belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’” When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

James 2.14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?