With Reckless Abandon

"There's a wideness in God's mercy

I cannot find in my own

And He keeps His fire burning

To melt this heart of stone

Keeps me aching with a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless raging fury

That they call the love of God.”

—the late Rich Mullins, “The Love of God”

I make my living with words, and when they don’t seem to fit, my first instinct is to reach for my red editing pen. It's not just business writing. Sometimes, a song that describes some aspect of God will come along that contains a shocking word. One that doesn't seem to fit at all. And my oh-so-sensible flesh desperately wants to red-pen it into something, well, safer and more comfortable...for me. 

But inevitably, war breaks out within. My heart-after-God self surprises by rising up with a louder voice, and with no red pen in hand, is drawn to these songs in wonder if not like a magnet. Because, like countless poets and artists have done throughout history, the writers of these songs are in First Love mode as they tell their story and pour out their hearts. They are trying to help me see beyond a Captain Obvious kind of faith by describing something about God’s nature and character that is so incredible, so Eternal, that only seemingly outrageous words come close to describing the indescribable—the feeling and knowing that comes with experiencing God at work in your life.

About such things, the late Brennan Manning wrote:

“Employing adjectives such as furious, passionate, vehement and aching to describe the longing of God are my mumbling and fumbling way to express the Inexpressible. Yet, I plod on. Both theology, which is faith seeking understanding, and spirituality, which is the faith-experience of what we understand intellectually, offer a glimpse into the mystery. Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles (1 Corinthians 13:12). But someday, the adjectives will give way to the reality.”—from “The Furious Longing of God”

That 1989 Rich Mullins song, though. And one more recently that bursts: 

“Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God

Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the ninety-nine

I couldn't earn it, and I don't deserve it, still, You give Yourself away

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.”

It can be hard to get around what the dictionary says about "reckless": “without caring about the consequences of an action.” That just seems so, well, un-God-like.

But wait…

Jesus did risk everything—ministry, reputation, influence, friends—by ignoring social and religious standards by publicly talking to, loving, and touching lepers and other to-be-ignored outcasts of the day. He knew it could all unravel, but He knew that before the beginning of time. But He still came from Heaven to earth. Jesus never flinched, never hesitated, never cared about the possible negative response to His actions, because He knew his Father’s mission—and that recklessly, outrageously trumped all common sense and other people's opinions, even if they rejected him.

The leper speaks: "I am alone and no one loves me." I have been that leper at one time. But Jesus!

Jesus risked being stoned to death or at the very least being kicked out of the Temple, and the good chance that many of the very people He came to live and die for would walk the other way because, without caring about the consequences, He recklessly (to our sensibilities, anyway) chose to dine with tax collectors and sinners, and to hang out with and show compassion on those of ill repute, and liars, and cheaters. These were ones everyone was taught to stay away from: "They made their mess, let them live in it."

Throughout history, these all speak: “I’m too sinful to be saved and Loved.” And I was once one of them. But Jesus!

Even the most oft-quoted verse of them all is, in its own way, furiously reckless: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”…For God so loved, knowing full well that many of those whosoevers would reject the greatest Love gift of them all, or wander back in to messes or solitude like that 99th of the 100 sheep in the flock.

And I was surely one of them at one time or another on this journey. But Jesus!

This morning, I will seek to sing “Reckless Love” beyond the chord notations and scrolling lyrics, and perhaps pray in agreement with the composer that the shocking choice of poetry trying to describe the Indescribable goodness of my God will jolt me once more out of a safe, cozy, almost sentimental slumber of merely admiring the old, old story from a distance. It's too easy to drift there during the week, to become complacent, to go through the motions without realizing it. It's where that red pen is really needed—to keep editing out "lukewarm" so that I can once more...

“...see what an incredible quality of love the Father has shown to us, that we would be permitted to be named and called and counted the children of God! And so we are! For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, we are even here and now children of God, and it is not yet made clear what we will be after His coming. We know that when He comes and is revealed, we will as His children be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is in all His glory. And everyone who has this hope confidently placed in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure—holy, undefiled, guiltless.”—1 John 3:1-3, Amplified

And in seeing and doing so, to purpose somehow to return the favor to Him and my neighbor in reckless abandon:

“Nothing on earth matters more than this single thing: That we might see Jesus as He truly is, hear His call to follow, come what may, and love Him back dangerously, obsessively, and undeniably.”

—Pete Greig, "The Vision and the Vow"