As we celebrate Good Friday and Easter Sunday let us contemplate the enormous cost involved before the great joy of the resurrection morning. I don’t believe that anything meaningful or worthwhile in life comes to us without cost. Even the grace of God, which comes to us free of charge, is not without its cost. The grace of God comes to us at great cost for God gave his only Son to die upon the cross to pay the price for our sin and the restoration of creation. God’s grace is free, but it is costly. It is a free, but it is a costly grace for God’s grace demands that we take up our cross and follow him all the days of our lives. It is free, but it requires that we are changed and transformed into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. It is free, but it is costly for it insists that we live lives of obedience and surrender to the crucified One and that we do so joyfully and willingly without turning back or pandering to our old ways of life. For as Bonhoeffer stated, “When Christ calls a man [or a woman] he bids him [or her] come and die.”