"Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give" - instructions Jesus gave when sending His disciples to help and heal people. The helping and healing were to lead those healed to recognize God's power working among them, bringing them to hear the message that "the Kingdom of God is at hand."

Our world is more dominated than ever by considerations of cost. People and things both tend to be judged in terms of monetary values, "worth", the size of a person's income, or his car. Today's dominant importance of finance and trade has been very clearly signaled by the global recession. Such is the reality of our world. Does it always have to be this way? Does there have to be a price for everything?

There is a popular English saying: "the best things in life are free", things that seem mostly to be connected with our hearts and feelings, with the invisible, intangible world of spiritual values and worth. But even some of these now get dragged into the calculating world of putting a price on everything.

All that we have and are is a gift of God's love. This is what I must share with others, with my world, without asking or receiving anything else in return. There are "costs", of course, the efforts, labour, time, sacrifices, inconvenience, even hardships that fall upon me, the costs of being a disciple of Jesus. Unlike the commercial world, these are not "costs" to be passed on, but for me to carry.