What's So Reckless About Grace?--Part 5

I keep coming back to this theme for several reasons. 1) I'm obsessive. 2) It's a theme that has some real power behind it for those of us who follow Jesus. 3) I think, once it captures us, that reckless grace can transform our relationship with Jesus, our congregations, and the world around us. 4) As one comment put it, we may have a book here so I'm bouncing these ideas off of you to see where this might take us.

I've been mulling over different pictures of reckless grace and reckless optimism. Here's one:

A man and woman fall passionately in love with each other. Their love grows to the point that they want to do something absolutely reckless--commit themselves to each other for the rest of their lives! No more dating other people. No more what's mine is mine. Sharing the same house day after day after day after day. Taking care of the other when the other is sick. Putting up with their annoying habits. Getting older with them. Being willing to forgive and forget again and again and again...Marriage is crazy. It's reckless. It doesn't make sense. But it's precisely that recklessness that makes it work for so many people. For people in love, the action doesn't seem reckless at all. That reckless commitment is the springboard to undying love, freedom,grace, hope, joy, companionship, and the list goes on and on. Marriage truly is reckless optimism.

Reckless grace is always counter-intuitive in that when it seems to be recklessly giving up everything, it gains everything instead.

It's that reckless optimism that moved God to lay it all out there for us in Jesus.