Finding the right words

Jesus, help me try my best to understand what people -- and you -- are telling me. Amen!

"If anyone comes to me without hating their father and mother, husband or wife, brothers and sisters, they can't be my disciple," Jesus told a crowd. "If you're going to build a tower, you have to check first to see if you have the money to finish it, or people will laugh at you. In the same way, you have to give up everything if you're going to follow me."

If you know any really young kids, you know that what they say doesn't always make sense. Little kids often think they're talking just like the grownups, but the words that come out are just baby talk or all mixed up.

This week's Gospel (Luke 14:25-33) might seem like that at first. Jesus, who usually talks about things like loving your neighbor, now talks about hating people -- and then tells a whole story about building a tower.

People must have looked at Him like you look at a little kid, thinking, "He's not making any sense!"

When you watch toddlers talk, you can sometimes tell that they really have something to say -- they just don't know the words to let you know they saw something exciting, or that they're hungry. But they point and babble, and get upset when you don't understand.

Jesus must have felt like that when He taught people and they didn't understand! In the Gospel story, He was trying to tell His listeners that to follow Him, they had to be prepared to give up everything -- even to go against their families if they had to.

Like building a tower, Jesus said not to start following Him unless they could "finish the job."

When you think about it that way, it's a lot easier to understand!