Musical Musings: "Your Love is EXtravagant", Casting Crowns

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place
Your love is extravagant

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known You considered me a friend
Capture my heart again

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place
Your love is extravagant

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known You considered me a friend

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known; You considered me a friend
Capture my heart again

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate


In case you haven't figured this out yet, I usually muse about songs I like. This is one of them. It's simple, it's lovely, and even if it is a bit repetitive...there are worse things to repeat.

God's love as extravagant. Have you ever paired "extravagant" with God before? Had it ever occurred to you? American Heritage Dictionary defines extravagant in some interesting ways.
extravagant adj.
Given to lavish or imprudent expenditure: extravagant members of the imperial court.
Exceeding reasonable bounds: extravagant demands.
Extremely abundant; profuse: extravagant vegetation.
Unreasonably high; exorbitant: extravagant fees.
Archaic. Straying beyond limits or bounds; wandering.

God's love as lavish? Exceeding resonable bounds? Extremely abundant, profuse? Even exorbitant or straying beyound the limits or bounds. Have you ever thought of God's love that way before?

Yet that's what He is, that's exactly how to describe His love. I've long said that the Bible, from cover to cover, is a love story. It's the expression of God's love for us and the lengths to which He's gone to demonstrate it to us. You see love in the moment of creation, and I can almost hear the way the Word caressed the words spoken "Let us make man in our image". Can you hear the love there? "Come on, Dad...let's make them like us!" Oh, you can't? How about when you remember that creation was undertaken knowing that Man would stumble, would fall. Knowing that the death of Christ on the cross would be necessary to redeem us, listen to Him again. "Come on, Dad...Let's make them like us!" You don't hear God tempering love there...you don't hear the thing I think when I hear that. "Are you sure? You know it will cost your life to redeem them again. They'll hate you, they'll beat you, and they'll kill you. Are you sure you want to make them?" It's not until later you realize the extravagance of love that says "I know what's coming, I know what they'll do...and I love them, Dad, you love them, I love them, and I could no more not love them than I could cease to exist. Come on, Dad...Let's make them like us!"

What about in Daniel, Chapter 10? Christ appears to Daniel in a vision, and when He speaks to Daniel, he says "You who are treasured by God..." Treasured by God! Or John 3:16? God loved the world SO much that He gave His only Son!

John 13 introduces the last days, the last hours of Christ's life, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. The first verse...and this makes me cry, just to read it... John 13:1 says "Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love." He washed their feet, but I think the love he showed them encompassed far more than that simple act of service. I think that statement...that He showed the full extent of His love...John's referring to the crucifixion.

Giving your life for the one you love. That exceeds reasonable bounds, that pays an exorbitant price. That's extravagance at it's best.

There are some reading this now who don't understand what I'm blathering on about, not yet, anyway. But I'm praying for you, dear reader, those who understand me as well as those who don't, that you may come to know just how extravagant God's love is. I'm praying that you will see what Jesus did when He showed the full extent of His love. I want you to fall in love with the Savior who's given everything for love of you.