Reckless Wasteful God?

God is into extravagance. I cannot shake the amazingness of it, nor its implications.

Extravagant love.
Extravagant grace.
Extravagant forgivness.
Extravagant mercy.
Extravagant beauty.

You get the point.

Or do you? Do I?

Indulgence.  Absurdity. Excess. Folly. Lavishness. Outrageousness. Preposterousness. Recklessness. Squander. Unreasonableness. Unrestraint. Wastefulness. Wildness.

That is extravagance and God is extravagant.

He orchestrates moments in time, paths crossing, people meeting briefly on the other side of the world to speak what He is saying, to allow heaven and earth collide for a moment, and to usher His life into their situations. From a practical standpoint it is wasteful, outrageous, and absurd, but God isn’t limited to our practicality.

God colors the flower in the remotest part of the world that no eye will ever see with as much beauty as the one that I will stop and breathe in deeply of the fragrance it pours forth in praise. He brilliantly paints the sky multiple times a day in a grand masterpiece that most of us barely even notice. It seems a lot like folly.

He pours out His love on the one convicted of murder, lavishes His grace on the one caught in the midst of adultery, and dines with sinners and tax collectors. It seems preposterous, reckless and completely outside of our comfort.

Maybe the most extravagant of all:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NIV)

The absurdity of God coming to earth in the form of a helpless, tiny baby. The outrageous idea of Jesus, the Son of God, having to grow up, work, and live for years in obscurity. The unreasonableness of God made flesh and dying a criminal’s death, bloodied, beaten, bruised.

It is too extravagant for most of us so we try to tame the One who is wild and untameable.  The extravagance God shows frightens most of us away. It is too messy and it doesn’t fit in our box.

But what happens if we begin to live and believe in a God of extravagance?