Reckless Love

My friend Sabrina and I were chatting via email this morning. As I read her words about facing her own self-centeredness, while thinking she was such a giver, I was taken back by the similar issues I addressed this week. The difference is that she's battling her way through chemotherapy and all of the ugly things associated with cancer. This is a time when others delight to give to her, yet her fertile heart is concerned about her own selfishness.

Isn't that just what trials do in us? They burn away the filth of our own self-centeredness, which runs so deeply in our souls?

When Bill, my first husband went to be with the Lord, the Scripture that saturated my life was, "Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never anymore than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way anyone who holds onto life just as it is, destroys that life. But if you let go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal." John 12:24-25 MSG

Rereading this passage that prophesied Jesus' fate and the account that followed as He prepared for what was to come, I was struck by how He assessed those blind, whose hardness of heart kept them from perceiving Him or being healed. Daily we too can opt to live in our own hard heartedness, blinding us from Christ's very example.

In Chapter 13, during the Last Supper, Jesus not only spoke, but actively laid down the pattern that we are to follow as He washed the feet of His disciples, saying, "...so the Master and teacher, washed your feet, you must now wash each other's feet. John 13:13-14 MSG

Yes, I can actually choose to let go...let go of all that I hold so tightly in my grasp and live in reckless abandoned love, rather than waiting until I face a circumstance, be it loss, cancer, financial trouble or the like, and witness those traits fall into the ground to sprout selflessness.

This year what I am asking to receive for Christmas is a heart that is so moved by His presence that I become abandoned to His reckless, jaw dropping love.