A Lavish Offering

It was just another 3AM set at just another twelve hour burn midway through the year. The night was chilly and though I had awoken earlier than I planned, it turned out to be a good thing because I was able to drive Elizabeth back to Green Street after she had gotten accidentally stranded at the Life Center. By the time I returned, Lucas and Sam were halfway through their nightwatch set. I didn't really know what to expect and so had no great expectations, but it was bare moments in before I was flooded with the love and presence of God.

When I'm 82, let it be said of me, "He wasted his life on Jesus."


No fragrant perfume this, but a far more costly sacrifice. One year's wages can little compare to a whole life's years. It is almost a silly word to use in that context... "waste." But it demonstrates perfectly the extravagance of love, that giddy desire to give more than sensibility or society dictates to be entirely... well, proper.

I remembered those moments some two months later when Levi Miller led our afternoon prayer room set during a quick visit. It's kind of an understatement to say that he is an intense guy, but in the middle of the raw worship (and broken guitar strings), he flowed into Phillips, Craig, and Dean's Pour My Love On You. Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere shifted into that strangely familiar tone of lovesick devotion, the kind that is willing to pledge itself to a "wasted life."

Like oil upon Your feet
Like wine for You to drink
Like water from my heart
I pour my love on You...
With praises like perfume
I lavish mine on You
Til every drop is gone,
I pour my love on You...


I know what C.S. Lewis says in his Letters to Malcolm about setting up a standard by focusing on our ideal moment and then missing the blessing of all the lesser but still precious moments after. Still, I want that passion burning in my heart and soul, to live out with a laid down life the words that tore themselves one by one from my throat. It doesn't feel as romantic, as tragically glorious once you leave the prayer room, but He is there always, drawing me away to be with Him in the secret place even in the middle of a busy day, even with the briefest fall of eyelids to remember and whisper love. Til every drop is gone...