His Extravagant Love

This weekend, I moved my morning reading spot from the overstuffed rocking chair next to the window in our sitting room to the couch in the living room with its gas fireplace. As I sat sipping my coffee and watching the flickering flames, I was filled with contentment. I mused over the fact that we arrived back home in West Michigan just over a year ago and moved into this house a mere ten months ago. I thought about the deferred dreams that paved the way for that move, which filled a deeper need in all of us–to be back where the four seasons are markedly distinct, where we can dip our toes in the Great Lakes any time we wish, where apple orchards and fields of blueberry bushes abound, where family and old friends waited. Where we have been blessed with a cozy cabin of a house on four-and-a-half acres of woods and rolling pastures. When I consider all of this, his love for us feels extravagant. We merit none of this. We could not have earned it.

There have been painful moments, too, however. Saying goodbye to dear friends in Memphis. Misunderstandings as we navigate family relationships, finding our place again after almost a decade of living a full day’s drive away. Scary cases of COVID. Complications with the purchase of our house. A long separation this fall while my husband works overseas. But I still feel God’s extravagant love. The opportunity to navigate difficulties knowing he is in our corner, knowing how faithful he has been and continues to be, is something I count as joy.

It’s hard-won, this ability to feel loved by God during hard things. It’s the product of years of seeing his faithfulness in hindsight, after painful experiences and great losses and bad decisions. It makes me glad to be approaching fifty, to have lived enough years to know he is faithful even when I falter.

1 John 3:1 says,

Consider the kind of extravagant love the Father has lavished on us—He calls us children of God! It’s true; we are His beloved children. And in the same way the world didn’t recognize Him, the world does not recognize us either. When we feel like we are not good enough to be loved by God, we should remember that God’s love is greater than our doubts. We must silence the sounds of condemnation so we can hear the voice of God’s loving assurance and remember that He has selected us to be part of His family. (VOICE)

Most mornings, I leave the house at sunrise in a jacket and wellies, coffee in hand, to let our five hens (Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Molly, and Minerva—so named by my children) out to graze, and I walk to the back pasture, our orange tabby cat trailing in my wake, to watch the sun come up over the trees, lighting up the fields and making the dew sparkle on the grass. Then I walk back to my swing under the cedar trees and marvel again that we are here—that we get to live this life, in this place, together. His extravagant love surrounds me, and I see it in so many little things:

• The vast number birds that live in the thicket next to our house and happily flock to our feeders.
• The abundance of raspberries we pick at the height of summer.
• The scarred knotty pine walls inside our house, which glow in the afternoon light.
• The apple-laden trees in our small orchard, giving us their abundance in autumn.
• The joy of my children as they run and play on our land, as they nurture chickens and cats and spy on the deer eating in the orchard.

If we have eyes to see it, we can find evidence of his extravagant love all around us, simply by observing the beauty of the world he created for us.