Let It Go

Luke 14:25-33

The time of year is quickly approaching where my wife and I take a look around our home for items we can donate. I call the items clutter, my wife calls them mementos. Whatever the name, these items are things that have been given to us, by others or each other, as gifts to commemorate a birthday or our anniversary or some other reason. There are also items which have been given to us for no reason whatsoever; just because we were thought of.

Over the year we accumulate clothes, stuffed animals, shelf-trinkets, small decorative items to place around the house, and the like. If, at the end of the year, we don't look for things which we can donate our home would become overrun with what I call clutter and my wife calls mementos.

Just last year I had a pair of perfect speakers in storage. I had these speakers for at least a dozen years and I was waiting to get the perfect stereo system to which I could connect my speakers. That stereo got more difficult to find as the years went by as almost every system comes with its own speakers. So, last year I had to let them go.

It's difficult to let things go sometimes, especially if you know what you're holding on to is perfect. So, imagine what the hearers of today's story in Luke felt when Jesus said that in order to be one of his followers you had to be willing to give up everything that was important to you.

Everything.

Family must be disavowed. Possessions cast aside. Friends can be no more. Life itself was to be given. It certainly takes a deep willingness to give away things to be a disciple of Christ. The question is are we ready to give it away?

As I watched my donations being unloaded at the thrift shop I overheard one of the workers say, "Wow, look at these speakers. These will really help us raise the extra money we need." Those words brought comfort; not from the pain of giving up my speaker, but from the knowledge that what I'm willing to give up is going to make someone else's life better.

Maybe that's what Jesus meant.