Hidden Costs

Renovating a kitchen is very much like making it new. It literally becomes a new creation. Floors, cabinetry, even a window. Then of course there is the paint, trim and a dozen other bits and pieces, all of which you know about in advance. So, when you do your planning, you take that all into account in your budgeting.

We were just in the process of finishing the renovation of our kitchen. We’d waited more than ten years to do this, and finally scraped enough money together to do the job - we thought! Our original budget seemed to be on target, but there appeared a few surprises: things we didn’t count on, or even suspect. Some of them were quite interesting.

For instance: When we began to lay the imitation hardwood floor, we found that the original builder had made several major errors in measuring. One involved the consistency of the width of the room. The extra time and material needed to make it appear even and parallel was a bit of an extra we didn’t count on. The finishing trim came in at a higher price than we had been told.

Hidden costs.

The kitchen floor seemed flat for the last twelve years we have lived in this house, but when we took out a useless wall, then tried to lay the flouring, we found that the hallway made by that wall was way out of whack. In the width of the hall, there was a drop of about an inch in less than three feet. When it was still a hall, with a rug on it, you never noticed. When it became a part of the kitchen, had we left it, it would have appeared as a miniature cliff. It was a glaring fault - hidden.

We had two choices: either the abundant use of shims to raise the area that was low, or literally cut through the floor and raise it from below. Shimming would have taken more hours of detailed work than we had time to do. So we cut through the floor, raised the floor with a house jack and put in a strong support. All of which took more time and material than we had planned. Hidden costs.

You almost need x-ray eyes to see these kinds of problems in advance. We don’t have x-ray eyes. We just have hidden costs.

I couldn’t help but think of life itself. There are hidden costs when we do some things in life. A young person, wanting to experiment with drugs, takes his first dose, never thinking of anything but the pleasure it is supposed to bring. He doesn’t think of the hidden cost, which may be his very life.

Or the young gal who chooses abortion rather than birth, never thinking of the possible feelings of guilt, or depression, and the physiological result of her action. Hidden costs.

People who began smoking cigarettes forty years ago never realized the hidden costs to their health which they are now experiencing. Emphysema, cancer, and a dozen other debilitating diseases.

And there is a reason these costs are hidden. In 2 Corinthians 4:2-4 we read:

“But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.”

If we were all born with an x-ray-like insight into the spiritual realm, there would be a great deal less pain, suffering, heartache and sorrow in our experience.

It’s only when there is that divine flash of light from God that we get sudden insights into the hidden costs of sin, wrong choices and actions.

A few hidden costs in the renovation of a kitchen is one thing. But when the god of this age blinds people to the hidden costs of a life without God, there are eternal consequences.

Ask God for good sight!