The Generosity of God Talk

I Led Our Staff in a Discussion at our Growth Conference in Tijuana

I used Adobe Firefly to Generate this Image

There were 250 people in the room, so it was a bit challenging to lead a discussion, haha! But it was fun. I had them getting groups of three or four in their rows. I picked out three different passages from the Bible for them to read.

• Psalm 104 (The Whole Thing!)

• Luke 15:1-32 (The Stories of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and Lost Sons)

• James 1:1-18 (Focusing on vv. 17-18

And I created some questions to help them discuss each passage.

I finished by sharing about how God has been demonstrating His generosity to Kay Charlotte and me in this season of loss and grief. I got a bit teary-eyed and my voice choked up a bit, but I got through it. The session was recorded. You can listen to it here:

(50 mb mp4a file)

Note: The talk is translated because our staff speak both Spanish and English… So this might be an opportunity. Also, for whatever reason, the recording missed out on my first sentence.

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WANNA DO THE STUDY? Here are the Slides:

And Here are the discussion questions:

Read and discuss Psalm 104 with your friends. Here are some questions to help you get started:

• What’s the overall message of this passage? How would you summarize it in a sentence?

• How does this passage reveal God’s generosity? That is, how is God generous? What verses, phrases, or word choices show us what God’s generosity is like?

• What’s a detail that sticks out to you in this passage?

• Is there a human response to God’s generosity here? Does the passage give hints or clues or instructions to us?

• What do you want to take from this and move forward with it?

Scriptures for Further Study:

• Genesis 1-2

• Matthew 6:26

• Daniel 2:21

• Proverbs 16:9

• Philippians 4:19

Read and discuss Luke 15:1-32 with your friends. Here are some questions to help you get started:

• How are these three stories related?

• Who is in the audience?

• What’s Jesus point? Can you summarize it in a sentence?

• How do these stories show us God’s generosity?

• Is there a phrase or verse that sticks out to you?

• Is there an instruction or human response here?

• What do you want to take from this and move forward with it?

Scriptures for Further Study:

• Titus 3:5-6

• Isaiah 55:7

• Psalm 130:7-8

• Hosea 2:19

• John 10:11

• John 3:16

• Micah 7:19

Read and discuss James 1:1-18 with your friends. Here are some questions to help you get started:

• Where do we see God’s generosity in these verses?

• Have you experienced the generosity James is describing?

• Is there a phrase or verse that sticks out to you?

• What instructions or a proper human responses are found in this passage?

• What will you take with you?

Scriptures for Further Study:

• Psalm 145:9, 4, 7

• Matthew 7:11

• Psalm 145:16

• Psalm 14:1

• Psalm 107:31

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Here’s What I Said about God’s Generosity in Suffering:

In this world, you will have trouble.

Take heart, I have overcome the world.

—Jesus

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We can expect trials of many kinds in our lives. And we know God comforts us in all our troubles (2 Cor.1:4).We know that God is close to the brokenhearted. (Ps.34:18). We know that those who mourn are blessed, (Mat. 5:4). And I’m absolutely convinced that Jesus has been blessing us in our awful season. Isaiah saw Jesus in his imagination and he called Him a “man of sorrows”, (Isaiah 53:3). Certainly we can understand why He would be sorrowful. He was betrayed by a friend. He was beaten, cursed, punched, and whipped. He was crucified; His followers scattered. He was abandoned. He was thirsty. He was a Man of sorrows.

But I suppose it is so much more than even what He suffered in His human life. Since the Fall, God has contended with evil. He’s engaged with it, He’s limited it. He’s restrained the chaos. And He works with us — a resistant creation. We set our wills against His. And He has not withdrawn Himself from this evil or from us, His flawed creatures.

***

Including Ukraine, there are more than 100 armed conflicts in the world. Hate and death and war are continual, and the most precious, beautiful, holy, and perfect Being continually subjects Himself to all this that is so against His nature. There is a kind of expensive generosity at work here. God remains present in the middle of all our sin and pain. Although He is not the cause of it, God takes responsibility for the evil in the world. And in doing so, He overcomes it through His suffering on the cross. (This is a paraphrase of G. Boyd “The Point of the Book of Job” on ReKnew October 16, 2018)

***

I have thought of death as a tool in God’s hand. I thought it was a way for God to limit sin and its effects on us. And I suppose this is kind of true. God knows our beginning and our end, and the wise among us learn to number their days. But God is not a God with a stopwatch. He is not timing our lives, not counting down the seconds. He doesn’t shout, “TIME’S UP!”, and then turn out our lights.

God does allow death. It is a result of humanity eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is the result of our mistrust in His Word and of choosing our own version of what is right and wrong.

***

And I’d like to think that there are only two forces at work, God’s generosity and my faith. And so in my case, who do I blame for my son Levi’s death? Did God fail me? Did I fail my son? Did I not pray enough? When I prayed, did my faith falter? Perhaps my view of reality is too simplified.

There is also chaos in God’s good creation. There is personified evil that actively resists God’s purposes. A being called the Prince of Persia delayed God’s message for Daniel. And human choices that don’t reflect His character happen continuously, producing evil results. Multiply this by the billions of us on earth, and my simple worldview is simply not enough to make sense of this.

The author, Nicholas Wolterstorff writes, “Death is shalom’s mortal enemy. Death is demonic. We cannot live at peace with death.” He goes on to write, “The Bible speaks of God overcoming death… God is appalled by death. My pain over my son’s death is shared by His pain over my son’s death. And, yes, I share in His pain over His Son’s death.”

***

I asked God why my son had to die. I asked Him why He didn’t intervene. He could have snapped His fingers and Levi would have revived, and been made whole. Why not? We are YWAMers, we believe in miracles. Kay Charlotte and I try our best to live righteously, shouldn’t God have made a way for Levi to live?

I asked God, “Where were you?” And I saw the Lord. I saw Him in the passenger seat of Levi’s Subaru. Levi had just sat down in the driver’s seat, with a bag from WalMart and a sandwich from Subway. And that’s when he passed. He never even shut the car door. And that’s where the Lord was. He was not gone. He did not watch from a distance. He was with Levi. Right there. And He wept. He weeps with me, with us. This is how generous my God is. He enters into my worst day. He was present. And His adversary death came for my son, and God’s Son, the One who died in all our places, was there with him as he died. He didn’t withhold Himself from the cross; he didn’t withhold Himself from this moment either.

Oh, our generous God!

***

Ω

Calculate

I wanted to do a thing that would honor Levi.

In true ‘Craig-fashion’, it snowballed into a bigger thing…

I swiped these images from the Swatch website but it’s okay, AI does it too… winks

Levi and I share* a like for watches. When Swatch came out with the ‘MoonSwatch’ a few years ago, he got the Saturn and Pluto versions, and I got the Moon one. These are inexpensive plastic, (errr… “bio-ceramic”), replicas of the watches that many astronauts wore into space and on the moon.

***

As Levi was finishing up his Master’s thesis last fall, I had the idea to get him a watch. I wanted to get him something nicer, something made out of metal, something to really mark the moment and celebrate his accomplishments. I had a watch in mind, (a Hamilton Khaki Field watch in bronze with a white dial), I imagined us taking him to dinner after his thesis defense. I’d slide the box across the table and say, “I’m proud of you, son.” But I hesitated knowing that his taste and mine often diverged. And for such an important moment, I wanted to make sure he got something he would love and wear for years to come. So I thought I would write him a nice note in a card that would include the line, “Let’s go shopping for a real watch when come home for Christmas.”

I thought to myself, it’s kind of lame to give him an ‘IOU’ on such an occasion. Then I had a brainstorm:

I’ll Give Him a Calculator Watch

as a kind of placeholder and as a fun joke…

I’ll get him a Casio Calculator Watch as a kind of placeholder. He’ll have something to open when we take him out to dinner, and it will be a fun joke. Plus, I knew he would actually wear it and enjoy the joke of it.

I ordered a navy blue one on Amazon. It arrived the day he died.

***

I thought I’d just put it in the closet and never wear it. But for some reason, I decided to take it with me when we flew to Fairbanks to receive Levi’s remains. While there, Kay Charlotte, Taylor, and I had dinner with two of Levi’s professors. Jill is his advisor, and James is someone Levi connected with quite a bit. We met at a Thai restaurant that is one of Levi’s favorites. I had a brainstorm:

What if we created a silly and kind of lame ‘scholarship’? What if we award this inexpensive calculator watch to a worthy student? What if instead of choosing someone who is the best at the math, that they choose someone who reflects the qualities we see in Levi…

They loved the idea, so I left the watch with them.

*******

A few weeks later, I thought to myself that it would be good if I wrote a letter to accompany the watch. That way the recipient would know more of the story and appreciate the silliness of it, but also the meaning behind it. So I worked on a letter.

***

After writing the letter, I thought." “Well, receiving this watch and getting this letter are kind of out of the blue. Maybe I ought to explain more about why we are giving a watch.” So I wrote something very similar to what you’ve just read above.

***

That got me to thinking more deeply about why watches are important to me. I’d read a post by a guy names Frank Chimero. He wrote about how we talk about time, that most of the terms are transactional, like we ‘make’ time, we ‘take’ time, we ‘spend’ time, etc. And this reminded me of my meditation on Psalm 90 from back in July. So after a little help from ChatGPT as my thesaurus, a kind of poem came out.

***

Then I thought, “If this is successful and meaningful once, maybe we do it more than once?” I mean, I’d spend another $30 on another calculator watch to continue to honor Levi’s life. I’d do that for as long as it is meaningful. And I guess, if we do it again, it’s quite likely the recipient will have never even met Levi. So I dug out the biography that our dear friend Andrea put together for Levi’s Remembrance Service.

***

A Booklet Happened

So now, I’ve got a number of pieces. There’s a letter. There’s an explanation. There’s a kind-of-poem. And now a bio. And then I thought of these:

I Carry a Pocket Notebook Everywhere

I have literally dozens of these things. They’re in every backpack and bag I own. They’re in drawers, on my desk. Everywhere.

I carry these little pocket notebooks everywhere. Field Notes are my favorite. And I remembered that Levi had quite a number of notebooks too. He liked to sketch out ideas and math concepts. He’d use them as a scratchpad for calculations. He once told me that physicists and mathematicians tend to keep their notebooks for a lifetime.

What if I made a little notebook to contain all these elements? What if I included extra pages to make it useful to the recipient? A little conversation with ChatGPT revealed that graph theorists, (Levi’s branch of math), prefer a dot grid with 5mm spacing…

Long story short, this happened:

The Little Notebook Cover and Back Cover

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A Sticker Happened

Not long after that, I got an offer from Sticker Mule, my favorite sticker company: 50 3-inch round stickers for $29. So I thought, “The recipient ought to at least get a cool sticker for their water bottle, right?” And I got to work on a sticker.

I Love How These Turned Out

I’m a sucker for a sweet sticker!

***

Math + Faith Happened

The booklet eludes to Levi’s faith, but it didn’t really spell it out. So I thought, “What if the recipient received a small, one page invitation to explore faith like they’re exploring math?” I thought of Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, and Lee Strobel who are such thinking believers, who have spent their lives in inquiry and learning more about God in an honest pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness. This happened:

I did my best to reflect Schaeffer, Lewis, Strobel, and Jesus with this… I laid it out, printed it back to back, trimmed it, and folded it up into sixths.

***

Packaging Happened

I don’t know why, but I’ve always held a candle for string tie envelopes. I found these awesome Japanese ones on Jetpens.com. I bought both sizes. The little notebook and sticker go into the big one. The Math + Faith resource goes into the little one, which then also goes into the big one.

I labeled the front of the envelopes in a style to match the booklet and Math + Faith resource

***

Over the Top?

Isn’t all this a little much? After all, isn’t just one person receiving this watch?

Yes, I guess it’s a little much. And yes, I think I’m doing this because it helps me keep moving. It’s part of my grief. It’s part of my loss to try to exercise creativity, beauty, and generosity. And I think I’m trying to reflect God’s over-the-top-ness when it comes to loving His creation. So the answer is yes. I’ve gone overboard. I’m hoping that the recipient(s) will see the care and the creativity and the love that I’ve put into this. I hope that will create a response in them towards Levi’s best qualities, his goodness, his kindness, his enthusiasm. I hope they will lean into the idea that there is something larger than us, larger even than math; that Love Himself is near…

And I’m still not done. Almost but not quite.

***

A Poster Happened

So those folks at Stickermule ran a special on a poster: one 18x24 full color print for $19. I got inspired. I’ve always loved Shepherd Fairey’s work. The colors, the iconic nature, the beauty, the composition. So I saw one of his recent works on Instagram and made this:

I Made a Poster

I tried to imitate the style and layout of one of my design heroes, Shepherd Fairey. I used the imagery from the booklet.

I figured the faculty could hang this on the bulletin board in the hallway of the math building where Levi worked, took and taught classes. It could maybe create some interest in the ‘scholarship’ and perhaps celebrate Levi’s life and godly qualities.

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I think I’m done. But who knows?! I’ve got other ideas too…

When the first watch is awarded, I’ll let you know. Thanks for going on this epic, long-form journey with me!

Ω

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*I’ve settled on the idea that although he is not with us, Levi is alive. Perhaps he is more fully alive than I am. And so I’ve chosen to continue to use the present tense with him. I have a son. I named him Levi. He is in the presence of Jesus in a way that I cannot be right now. He is not gone; he is just not here.

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My Notes from the Paul Seminar

I published my notes and the supplementary materials from the Paul Seminar we attended in Switzerland

I Didn’t Write a Book

I put my notes and all the supplementary materials from the course in printed form… 

I took a lot of notes in Switzerland. And Maureen Menard provided all sorts of interesting and valuable supplementary materials. (Including photos of her notebook with notes and diagrams of what we discussed in class). I wanted to review all this great stuff to get the most I could out of the seminar.

One thing led to another, and I decided to lay them out as if this were a book. I found a company called Blurb online that would print a black and white paperback book — yes a single book. I couldn’t resist.

Screenshots of a few of the pages.

The seminar consisted of

• Reading N.T. Wright’s Paul: A Biography

• Pre-Intensive assignments to complete before gathering

• A 12-day Intensive at the YWAM campus near Lausanne, Switzerland

• A 2,000 word paper, (that was the limit I was allowed… there was so much to write about I could have easily done 3,000!)

• Some Post-Intensive assignments

So I gathered all my notes and went through and edited them. I gathered up as many of the supplementary materials as I could find. And I added in my homework from both the pre-intensive and post-intensive phases.

I think my favorite part is a compilation of all the books, YouTube videos, articles, podcasts, and websites mentioned throughout the intensive — all together there were 50+ resources… And yes, there is a part of me that wants to order every book listed and get started on them!

After it was all said and done, I have a 200+ page paperback book on my bookshelf. And, just last week, I referred to it as I prepared a talk for our staff on God’s Generosity…

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A Day in the Life of The Life of Paul Seminar

Here’s a quick glimpse at what a typical day looked like in our Life of Paul Seminar

The Whole Life of Paul Seminar Crew

• 5:00-6:00 — Not part of the seminar, but I just get up early to read and pray

• 6:00-6:45 — Yoga (yes, I’ve been doing yoga lately…) and a shower

• 6:45-7:15 — Breakfast of yummy bread, yogurt, fruit, and granola

• 8:30-9:30 — Class which is a good mix of worship, teaching, and discussion

• 9:30-9:45 — Break (Race downstairs to the cafe and try to get in line for coffee before the students from the 3 other schools!)

• 9:45-12:30 — Class

• 12:30-2:00 — Lunch where we sat with our classmates (seminar-mates?) to get to know one another better

• 2:00-4:00 — Prayer, worship, or meditation on our own. This was space to personally process what was happening in class and to prepare for tomorrow’s class.

• 4:00-6:00 — Practical Ministry, which was a way for us to help care for the community at YWAM Lausanne. I helped paint a hallway on the top floor of the Chalet

• 6:00-7:00 — Dinner together

We had some fun outings in the evenings. One evening we hiked to a lovely little farm-to-table restaurant and had a wonderful Swiss dining experience. Another we went down to a cute town on the shore of lake Geneva and enjoyed hanging out.

We so enjoyed the other participants. There were 16 of us all together, and Kay Charlotte and I didn’t know any of them. (We had met Maureen, the woman who ran the seminar, several times before, but never spent a lot of time together). In the two weeks, we really connected through great discussions, shared meal times, and special moments of worship and communion. Everyone contributed so much that I feel like I was learning from all everybody, not only Maureen.

The Seminar was fantastic. I took tons of notes (that I still need to go over). We still have an assignment this week. We all are to turn in a reflection of our time together, and then comment on each other’s reflections. There was a lot more than learning some facts — we explored how Saul became more Christlike and discussed what this meant for us in our own journeys of faith. Kay Charlotte and I feel renewed and refreshed.

Kay Charlotte and I are so glad we went. We are better equipped for what’s next. We are more connected with those who will help. And we are closer together and closer with Jesus.

Campfire Time

The Classroom Was Set Up for Discussion

Fantastic Swiss Dining at Chatel des Enfants

Kay Charlotte's Tradition: McDonald's in Every Country!

Marking Time

We are in Switzerland, the Land of Chocolate, Cheese, and Watches!

Only one of these is Swiss. From left to right: Seiko Quartz from my Stepdad; MoonSwatch Quartz (this is the Swiss one!); and Seiko Sports Automatic.

We are at YWAM Lausanne and we’re at the halfway point of the Life of Paul Seminar. It’s been wonderful and challenging. One of our assignments was to meditate on a verse from the Bible. I chose:

Teach us to number our days that we may gain a wise heart.

Psalm 90:12

I spent an hour thinking on this. I thought about each phrase:

Teach Us…

• It’s a request… it says,

• I recognize that I need to be mindful in my life.

• I recognize that I can run off in pursuit of meaningless things

• I recognize that I am often unaware of the big picture; focused on the minutiae… (I am a little too left brained).

• I think too that ‘teach us’ is saying, “Hey you, reader! Learn wisdom! Be aware of how short your life is!”

‘Teach us’ suggests a relationship, a mentoring, a transforming… it recognizes the ongoing walking with that we have with Holy Spirit. When I put myself in the posture of a learner, it leads to wisdom.…

Numbering our Days…

• I am to live in the reality of death

• I need to recognize that the time is short

• The unspoken is, “make the most of it”.

• Since this is about wisdom, it suggests we make the most of the time not in a hedonistic, self-serving way, but in a wise, God-fearing way.

• Numbering our days shouldn’t result in a cautious holding back; it does not mean don’t love, don’t eat, don’t run.

• Instead it should mean, run faster, love harder, fully experience your life

• On the other hand, numbering our days shouldn’t result in a reckless pursuit of pleasure.

• It may mean go hard into the lonely disciplines, the ones of abstinence as well

A Wise Heart…

This mindfulness results in wisdom. Is it causation? Or correlation? I suppose it’s possible to be mindful but unwise.

• Wisdom is like the guide rails along the road.

• Too far in one direction, and we end up in self-serving, competitive, hedonistic, pleasure, with no regard for others or perhaps even self.

• Too far in the other direction and we end up not actually living and experiencing the days we are given.

• I suppose wisdom also includes right priority; the wise one prioritizes that which leads to life, that which aligns with God.

• There is a focus on the things that draw us closer to God and one another

• There is an intentional diminishing of even good things that may be creating distance between us

• The wise have an eternal perspective because life is short

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I was reminded that Paul wrote about this to the Ephesians:

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:15-16 (ESV)

As I was thinking about all this, I glanced down at my watch. I was wearing the Seiko Automatic. And in that moment, I didn’t care so much about what time it was… I was struck that this little machine on my wrist was ticking. It was marking the moment. It reminded me that life is less about being early or late or on time, and more about living this moment intentionally.

When I put my watch on this morning, I saw it as a reminder to make the best use of the time today…

How Can We Experience Peace?

Last Sunday, I gave a talk at Create Church in San Diego on Peace. It’s a message in the church’s series on the Fruit of The Spirit.

I had a lot of fun preparing and sharing this message — I hope you enjoy and that you experience Holy Spirit producing fruit in you!

Randy's Donuts, Dry Erase Markers, and the Letters of John

Last week I was invited to give a talk on the letters of John to the students of our Chronological School of Biblical Studies. We had fun. And Randy’s Donuts.

The slides of my presentation…

The class was only three hours long, but I probably prepared for 100+ hours — many of which were spent on making the slides you see above… en español no less!

The students are two weeks from completing this nine month course and they were just champs. The School of Biblical Studies is maybe the most academically rigorous course we offer. They study every word of all sixty-six books of the Bible. It’s intense. It can be exhausting. And life-changing.

I prepared for weeks. I looked up all sorts of historical info, including who wrote it, why, and what his point was. I did a deep dive into all my dictionaries, commentaries, handbooks, and other sources. I even enjoyed the Bible Project’s summary that you can find here.

Knowing that they were close to the end of their studies, I thought I’d start their celebrations early — I picked up a couple dozen of Randy’s Donuts on my way down to campus and was happy to pass them out to our tired young scholars.

If you’ve somehow found your way to this little page and are inspired to study the scriptures, I can highly recommend our course at Youth With A Mission San Diego/Baja. More info by clicking the button below!