Your love is extravagant

Love. It is not often that one manages to go through a day without hearing that word, at least a hundred times. We tend to throw it around a lot and we use it for all sorts of things from the ordinary to the sublime. I think we have honestly been anesthetized to it. And yet, there come those few rare moments in life when it is not the word itself that knocks you off your feet but the way that the idea of it is made manifest in your life.


This week I have had several of those moments. Walking into my office yesterday for my next to last day at work, I was greeted by green and yellow balloons, streamers turning my window into a make shift Brazilian flag, cards, hugs, and well wishes. Then it was cake and all of the staff coming together to send me off. If I was ever aware of my slightly introverted side, it was this moment. I have been to a ton of these receptions for other people, eaten a few treats, chatted with a few people, and then slipped back into my office to keep working. Part of me wanted to do that again, because it was uncomfortable for me to face all those people and be the center of attention, even for just an afternoon. To be celebrated, to hear people tell me how much I will be missed or how much I am loved. I would rather have slipped out unnoticed. I would rather have been the one celebrating someone else. It makes me wonder why it is difficult for (some of) us to receive love. Why is it easier for us to serve and care for others than for ourselves? Why is it so easy to love on others but so difficult to accept love when it is simply placed in front of us, or even lavishly poured out on us. Could it not be a sense of comfort gone awry or a false selfishness that robs other people of the same joy that we ourselves receive from loving or caring for others?


It makes me wonder if receiving God's love does not in fact also make us extremely uncomfortable at times. For although we believe in the concept of amazing grace, we live our lives fighting like hell to make sure that we do everything in our power to make sure we deserve it (oh, maybe that's just me? Nevermind.) Moments like birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, where we find ourselves unable to do anything but stand there and be showered with love and a tangible sense of God's grace. These are the moments when we realize that God is a God of extravagance. These are the moments we come face to face with what grace actually means, not in theory but in practice- that we as children of God matter and that God wants nothing less than a fatted calf celebration for each and every one of us.


Jean Pierre de Caussade once wrote “we are like visionaries who know every road in town and cannot find our way home” We as pastors, seminary students, church people, can throw around words like love and grace all we want. It may even give people the impression that we know what we are doing and that we have this whole God thing mapped out pretty well. But unless we allow ourselves to come face to face with the sometimes uncomfortable reality of God's love, seeing through to the deepest parts of our soul, made manifest in those who surround us, showered upon us even when we feel that we don't deserve it... we will be forever wandering and will never find our way home into the folds of God's extravagant embrace.

Thank you Mary, Lynda, Rebecca, Tracy Anne, Herbert and Elizabeth for showing me extravagant love this week...