extravagance.

these days, i'm trying to learn about this.  that i will never find the joy that was meant for my life, for my days, for my moments, if i don't learn to love God extravagantly...not just enough to get by, and enough to maintain a relationship with Him, but more than enough...with more than i have, with more than i am.  nothing else matters.  nothing, but the way i love Him, and love the people He's placed before me in this lifetime.

i get so caught up in striving to live my life rightly...in a way that people will look at as an exemplary testimony...but an exemplary testimony is one soaked with an adoration of Him who did it all...and i have to understand that people will not always understand this...or admire it.  that often it will look foolish and wrong...until they know Him.  Him who did it all.

and as it often does...the bible brings perfect light to this in dear, radical, extravagant mary...

"Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume (one that was her dowry...she literally was laying every ounce of her future at His feet); she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair.  And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given tot he poor?  It was worth a year's wages."  He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.  "Leave her alone," Jesus replied.  "It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial.  You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." -Luke 12:3-7

in Matthew, Jesus goes so far as to say, "I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her." -Matthew 26:13