Music: Reckless Love

   "Reckless Love" by Cory Asbury is a song about "the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God" that "chases me down, fights 'till I'm found" and "leaves the ninety-nine." It is this last description of God's love that Asbury focuses in on when he tell's the story behind the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xx0d3R2LoU

   The reference to the ninety-nine is from the Bible in the book of Luke (chapter 15). "All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.' Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives." (Luke 15:1-7 Common English Bible)

   Asbury sees God's love in seeking out the single lost sheep not as God being irresponsible with the other ninety-nine (which is the response that many people have when they read this story). Instead, the story can be seen as describing the action of someone who is willing to be reckless to have the one he loves back with him. God is willing to risk great loss in order to go after the one. Asbury says, God "is utterly unconcerned with the consequences of his actions with regard to his own safety, comfort, and well-being...his love is not shrewd...[it is] sometimes ridiculous...His love bankrupted heaven for you/for me. His love...isn't self serving. He doesn't wonder what he will gain or lose by putting himself on the line. He just simply puts himself out there on the off chance that you and I might look back at him and give him that love in return...His love isn't cautious. It's a love that sent his own son to die a gruesome death on a cross [I think this is what he means by bankrupting heaven]. There is no "Plan B" with the love of God. He gives his heart so completely, so preposterously, that, if refused, we would think it irreparably broken. Yet he gives himself away again, and again, and again, and again..."

   Even though we have not done anything that we could honestly say "deserves" the love of God, the love of God is one that can be described with the words "give yourself away." I think this is really the nature of all true love. In our lives, we do some things that we believe are commendable but other things that are the acts of someone hostile to God-that make us, in the words of the song, God's "foe." Not only have we not done enough good things to deserve God's attention, affection, and care but we have set ourselves up as God's opponents. We have opposed God's goodness and God's good intent in creating this world and humanity. Some of the specifics here might be using others as a means to our ends, living without gratitude, living with no attention to what we have learned that God has said, or living with no regard for how our unchecked consumerism damages the world we live in. These are all ways that we have acted against the goodness that God intended for all creation. And yet, in God's love, we are included in those he loves. And, God's love is giving himself away.

   The song expresses the faithful, long-suffering (to use a Bible word) force of God's love with the words "There's no shadow you won't light up, mountain you won't climb up coming after me. There's no wall you won't kick down, lie you won't tear down coming after me." Those pictures cover a lot of the places that we see ourselves in and that we feel unlovable and trapped in.