Extravagant Love

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and HIS LOVE is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:9; 11-12Again, please understand as I type this post my mind is flooded with a million mini moments of God’s beautiful Spirit today.   We seemed to experience His very breath at our first Project Site in Haiti.  There are so many directions I could take you from where I stand in Haiti, but one has seemed to overwhelm the others for this day.The beloved mommas and their baby love bugs!Compassion facilitates a Child Survival Program where they train and teach the mothers how to properly care for their children as well as taking care of the child in a whole and complete way.  They provide medical needs, emotional needs and plant deep spiritual seeds in the lives of these beloved women and their babies.Oh they were just radiant!!  They glowed from a deeper place than I even know.. a resolute place of standing on the Rock.  No matter the wind or the waves those precious mommas have sought out the help they need to become equipped, raise a family living in conditions most of us living in first world CANNOT EVEN FATHOM, let alone imagine.  And yet a remarkable Joy filled the church house this day.Joy!  Real Joy.  Real Jesus Joy that isn’t dependent on the next style bag or sale at Target.  Joy that is sustained, maintained, upheld, and complete in Jesus.  The needs they have are just that, needs…basic desires that are truly basic needs….stable housing, sanitary water, beds, food….and yet there was a love they gave us that even still I am trying to allow sink into my being.  A love wholly founded in Jesus.  They are the pure embodiment of Proverbs 31 among situations that are not based on their choices, but because of the very place their feet hit the pavement.  And in that place they have DECIDED to sing to Jesus…to sing to us.As we arrived to the Project after lunch the women filled the church with their babies to sing to us, share testimonies and ultimately bless US.They stood before us and sang songs with their babies in hand….the sound was Heavenly.  As the hymns rolled up to Heaven in French Creole I can only imagine the pleasure God experienced.  He responded to their souls, their hearts….we all felt His Spirit fall down.  Because as they continued to sing, their songs only burst forth with more power, with greater expression…with stronger belief in a mighty God.Oh, to be found singing with such fervor!  To be found singing with no thought of myself, to be found singing as they were singing – worshipping the God they entrusted their lives to!!Then in an act of complete extravagance they gave US gifts.  Crafted wood jars with their Compassion Project number engraved on the side.  Each mother personally handed a gift back to each of us.Tears don’t even begin to describe what was falling from my eyes.  Scales was more like it.  I “became” a little bit more today.  Love as I understood it became undone to be redone to the measure of God’s love.Our Compassion Tour Leader, Sean Dana, said it best….”You cannot out give the poor.  They have nothing to give so all they find to give, they give liberally.”THEY were found in the most extravagant abiding of Jesus I may have ever known.  They gave what they could not afford, in order to gain wait they could never loose…..love.  {Sound familiar Leviticus Bible study girls?!  It should!} When you give love freely, you never lose it because you release what you were not giving out of your own supply anyway so the love given in return becomes a beloved gift, a treasure.  The nearness of God is so intimate in that kind of expressed love.As a mother approached Toby and I to give us our gifts I was so compelled by her extravagant act of love that I held her face in my hands, clasping her in a hug.  Mother to mother we shared tears of kindred sisterhood.We shared love.  Be willing to share real love, that’s where Jesus is….I experienced it today.  I am sure to never be the same because of it.  Glory wave.“Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.  Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.  Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.” Proverbs 31:29-30