Extravagant: The Love of God

My eye was continually drawn to the vibrant colors, accented by green leaves in the vase on our dining room table. For years, I had seen buying freshly cut flowers as an extravagance. How could I justify the cost of flowers that wouldn't last, wouldn't endure?

Why indulge when they are here one week and gone the other?

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about permanence and life. The tipping scale of life is teetering at 45. My soul is drawn to search for things that last, like towering oak trees. However, this attitude of despising wastefulness goes further back. When you are a sojourner like I am, you can become stingy. Is that really needed? echoes in the recesses of my mind not only when I'm packing for a trip, but in my everyday life. Naturally, I am not a skimper. It was something the echo-voice consistently pointed to in shame. No one specifically told me to be a minimalist; instead, it was implied in the life of a missionary kid and as a follower of Jesus.

I began to confuse the tenet of contentment with "anything superfluous is sinful". This carried over into me unconsciously categorizing two important gifts into an almost wasteful neglect. These gifts are singing and writing. You see, I started to think that unless I was singing for others, for church, for anyone... it was a waste. The words that I typed into my computer have to be published in order to really count as something important.

My forties have drawn me back into a flower shop I hadn't been in since my childhood. When I was young, I sang because every note bubbled up and out. I sang because it was beautiful. Melodies poked at me incessantly. Notes that are here one fraction of a second and gone the next. Music is about as extravagant an act as Mary of Bethany pouring the nard on Jesus' feet, or Mary, the mother of Jesus, responding to her being chosen by praising the Lord in song.

Until 1877, when the phonograph was invented, the only way to keep sound was to hold it in our hearts. If you wanted music in your life, you either learned how to make it yourself or you had to wait until you were around a musician to play it or sing it in that moment. Nowadays, we don't treasure live music because we don't understand the value of it being an extravagant act meant for that exact moment. We've been spoiled into having it at the click of a button. We have only had 150 years of recorded sound. This technology has been a blessing but also a curse. Do we know what it is like to value music like the fleeting, extravagant act that it is?

Music is so much more than just a note. It is a moment in time when a vibration begins, then resounds in the inner chambers. When you love music, it stays within you, looking for opportunities to come out. What if all the recording and keeping of music says, "I don't need it in me. I can rely on this device to hold it for me. I don't need to know it because I can have it whenever I want." Tragic.

This isn't a philosophical treatise against computers and sound recorders. It's a call to give: to be generous. My heartsong isn't a duty of religious life. My heartsong is a spontaneous perfume on my Savior's feet. It is extravagant because it is for no other purpose than to give. There is no expectation or need other than singing because I was made to sing. Strumming because I can make music resound.

As I've honed in on music, I could just as easily see the extravagance of the written word. I must have two shelves of journals sitting on my shelf at home. My journals are a collage of prayers, quotes, verses, lyrics, drawings, images, but mostly: they are words I have not censored on a page. Day after day, I have taken out my journal and written. Sometimes I am just retelling what I did the day before. Sometimes I am crying out in complaints about everything under the sun. It's the collection of my thoughts over at least a decade. So many pages. So many words.... wasted?

This assumes that the writing must be purposed into something "useful". I guess we must address the pragmatic elephant in the room. While we see that our God is purposeful, useful, orderly, real, and resourceful, He lavishes us with words that should make us blush. He dances over me. He calls us his bride (Hosea 2:19-23). He loves us with an unfailing love in the Psalms over 120 times. We are his beloved.

My personal favorite book of the Bible, talking about the extravagance of God's love for us, is 1 John. Chapter 3 is my favorite, but all of the other chapters are a call for us to love others the way He loves us. It is hard to do that when you have not understood the depth of the Father's love for us.

Maybe this is what I have been learning all along: the extravagant love of God does not ask me to justify every beautiful thing by its usefulness. Some gifts are simply meant to be received. Some songs are simply meant to be sung. Some words are simply meant to be written. Some flowers are simply meant to brighten the room for the short time they are here.

So here I sit with my vase of cut flowers behind my laptop, reminding me to sing melodies, to write words, and to give generously because God the Father gave extravagantly. We love because he first loved us, and living out this delightful truth is music to his ears, a fragrant aroma, words that are not lost on a page.