The Path that Leads to Life

I Gave the Message at Create Church on Sunday, July 12, 2026. The text is Proverbs 4:20-27

It was super fun to give the talk at Create Church this week. I loved preparing. And I enjoyed being able to give a little context about Proverbs as part of the message. I got a lot of great feedback from the folks who were there. I hope you enjoy, are encouraged, and that you take up the Proverbs Challenge!

Eagle-eyed viewers will spot Levi’s Mission to Pluto Moonswatch on my wrist. I’m so glad I have this reminder of him. Of course, I wish he could have been there with me, but I’m grateful.

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Give Through

In a Few Months I’ll Start a Masters in Christian Formation

This is a two year journey that will help me to grow. I anticipate expenses up to $25,000 USD

Give Through

One of the reasons why I’m taking this course is to be more fruitful. I want to be more useful for the students and staff that I serve. And when you give, you give through me. You give through to the people I will serve. You give to students who are becoming missionaries. You give through to people who are serving others. And together we participate in serving the poor, the lost, and the least. Ultimately, we serve Jesus Himself.

A Book of My Notes for You

I’ll send you a copy of My Notes from Practicing the Way of Jesus with Paul the Apostle with your gift of $250 or more. This is the book of the notes I took during the seminar we attended in Switzerland last year. Inside are 200+ pages that will give you insight into what I’ll be studying in the Masters program.

I’m quite proud of the way the book turned out. The notes are an accurate reflection of the seminar, and it is a beautiful object. I thought deeply how to organize all the content. I chose the type and spent time setting it just right. I spent a lot of hours creating that bibliography. I hope that you find it inspiring in your own walk with Jesus.

Click the link below to go to YWAM San Diego/Baja’s GivingFuel page to make a donation for this program. A gift in any amount is welcome.

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Five Books for the Jesus Journey

The curriculum for the Jesus Journey School is inspired by these five books. Kay Charlotte and I read N.T. Wright’s Paul: A Biography last summer. So a month or so ago, I ordered up the other four and got down to reading. Here are a few thoughts from each of them.

These Five Books Are Shaping the Upcoming Jesus Journey School

Jesus Journey by Trent Sheppard

Sheppard focuses on Jesus’ humanity in this book. I’ve talked a lot about Jesus’ human nature in the classes I’ve taught, and I found this book to be so inspiring, and challenging, and funny! A favorite quote for me is:

“In my own journey with Jesus, there has been no greater motivation for my faith than the deep, dawning realization that God is one of us. More (fare more!) than the hope of heaven or the fear of hell, it is this bedrock belief—that we have seen the face of God in Jesus—that inspires and informs my faith.”

Bonus: I met Trent in the early 2000’s when we invited him to speak to our Mission Adventures staff and leaders at our MA Waves Gathering at YWAM Chico. I loved his passion for Jesus then, and I love his book now!

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The Ninefold Path of Jesus by Mark Scandrette

This one focuses on the nine beatitudes in Jesus’ sermon on the Mount. Scandrette casts theseas common struggles all humans face. Towards the end of the book, he shows how all nine can be part of our growth towards Christlikeness:

“What if the Beatitudes map a progressive journey of spiritual development? First, trust the Creator's care. Then, lament what is broken and wait for divine comfort. Affirm your inherent dignity and worth. Embrace your agency and power. Receive mercy and respond with compassion. Tell the truth and live whole-heartedly. Reach past differences to find common ground. And then surrender to suffering. The order is important. Only after you can affirm these realities can you confidently resist evil through nonviolence. The surrender response must come from a place of strength, confidence, and courage.”

Bonus: I worked at YWAM Los Angeles with Mark’s sister, Jen. On a trip to the Bay Area, we were able to meet with Mark in his home for a few hours — he’s such a kind example of who Jesus is.

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Know the Real Jesus by Alexander Venter

Venter has us look at Jesus through the historian’s lens. He combines historical research with biblical scholarship. This one started rather ‘thick’ with lots of technical terms and references to the long history of Jesus research. Although it was sometimes challenging, I found so much gold. For example, this nugget about Jesus’ parentage:

“…Jesus was 'the mamzer Nazareth'. [Mamzer is Hebrew for ‘bastard’]. The charge that he was illegitimately conceived plagues him all his life, even far from his hometown, evident in the disputes in Jerusalem during his ministry. When Jesus spoke of God as his father, Pharisees challenged him (John 8:19,41,48,53): "where is your father?... we are not illegitimate children (mamzers)... Aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed? Who do you think you are?" They saw him as a Samaritan half-breed due to mother's 'fornication'. Even in his village of Nazareth, he was known as "Mary's son", not Joseph's son (Mark 6:3).”

Ouch — I never read those passages as such personal attacks on Jesus by the Pharisees. Thankfully, Jesus knew His identity and endured this and so much more.

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Bearing God’s Name by Carmen Joy Imes

I think this book might be my favorite of this bunch. That subtitle, “Why Sinai Still Matters”, hints at how understanding the Old Testament, (or ‘Original Testament’ as one of my pastors likes to say) is critical for us to understand the New. Imes points out that many of us modern Christians have ‘unhitched’ the Old Testament from our faith. She writes,

“Rather than unhitching, I want to make the case that we should re-hitch to Israel’s Scriptures so that we can truly understand who Jesus is and what he came to do.“

She sets the Old Testament scriptures in context and helps us better understand what it means to bear the name of God in our humanity.

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Paul: A Biography by N.T. Wright

You know, finding a quote from each of these books sounded easy when I started. But I’m seeing that there’s just so much to choose from. If you were to hold my copies in your hands, you would see that I underline and highlight a lot. But one of my favorite lines is:

‘Saul had his feet on the ground, and his hands were hardened with labor. But his head still buzzed with scripture and the news about Jesus.’

This book shows me that Paul wasn’t a distant theologian but a hardworking, deeply human man who was completely captured by what God had done in Christ. He was convinced Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection had changed the world and he was willing to pay any price to help people understand and know Him.

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Jesus Journey School Concepts

You’re going to hear a lot about Jesus Journey over the next year or so… Kay Charlotte and I are helping to pioneer a new course for YWAM’s University of the Nations (UofN). This is something we’ve been praying into for three years now, and things are moving forward and accelerating!

Can you tell my process is rather chaotic/associative?!

In a few months, Kay Charlotte and I will be asked to help recruit potential students for this course. So a few weeks ago, I started sketching in my notebook some of the ideas that were bouncing around in my head. You can see photos of these pages above. As I was sketching, I came across a couple of solid ideas for a logo, I’m thinking something bold with thick lines. I also felt inspired to use icons. This is no surprise, because I love me some icons! I got to thinking about colors, and felt like the work could be vibrant…

So I brought some things into the computer and began to work on what will become an identity system for the school. This course will be offered on multiple continents in multiple languages. I’m hoping to be able to create a ‘kit’ of materials that can be used by anyone and everyone who will be running this course over the next few years.

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Last week a core team of folks from the UofN College of Christian Formation met in Orlando to work on the curriculum. I zoomed in and gave a presentation on what some branding/marketing/design could look like to promote this new course to prospective students. I’m happy to report that they were very enthusiastic!

I’ll have more to share as the work evolves.

Four Books on Grief

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

This was a hard read for me, not so much because Lewis is such a deep thinker, but because it hit home so deeply. And this is the one I read first, closest to Levi’s death. The book is so thin, less than 100 pages, but it took me a month to read. There’s so much in it that it’s hard to pick just one quote, but this one has stuck with me:

“Getting over it so soon? …To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he's had his leg off it is quite another …Presently he'll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it' But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man.”

The idea of walking with a limp resonates so strongly. I’ve lost my son. I am moving forward, but I won’t be the same again.

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Good Grief by Granger E. Westberg

Three copies were given to us in those first weeks after Levi died. Sadly, in my fog, I don’t recall who gave them to us. I didn’t realize it, but this one is a classic, originally published in the 1960’s. Westberg calls out ten phases of grief, I was only aware of five. While Granger has a lot of great things to say, this quote from Rabbi Joshua Liebman's book Peace of Mind is my favorite.

Says Liebman: "The melody that the loved one played upon the piano of your life will never be played quite that way again, but we must not close the keyboard and allow the instrument to gather dust. We must seek out other artists of the spirit, new friends who gradually will help us to find the road to life again, who will walk that road with us."

There are so many wonderful friends who are walking with us through this. There are a precious few who sit at the piano and play.

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Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Our dear friends Ronnie and Jamie gave us this book. They too have lost a son. The precious note they wrote on the inside cover is something I treasure. I identified closely with this book. Wolterstorff’s son died at 25 too. I think I underlined half of this book. These lines stand out to me:

“Loss is his as well. How very strange! Yet I feel it acutely. His sudden early death is not just our loss but his: the loss of seeing trees, of hearing music, of reading books, of writing books, of walking through cathedrals, of visiting friends, of being with family, of marrying, of going to church, and-dare I say it-of climbing mountains.”

Some of the most intense emotions overtake me when I recognize what Levi won’t get, what we won’t experience with him.

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Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright

A friend who visited shortly after Levi’s death said she was reading this, and that it was helping her make sense of death and loss. I think I ordered a copy that same day, (lest I forget!), although it was months before I was able to pick it up. The subtitle is, “Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church”. Reading this has been such a wonderful reminder of what the Bible says about life after death, and is helping me settle.

“Christians who die go to be with Christ, but that is not their final destination. The ultimate Christian hope is the resurrection of the body and life in God’s renewed creation when Christ returns.”

And

“Resurrection doesn’t mean life after death. It means life after life after death.”

And so, I imagine Levi is in a transitional state, living and present with Jesus, awaiting bodily resurrection. As much as I miss him, I’m sure he’s experiencing such goodness, beauty, and truth, that I can’t really wish he were still here.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.”

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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

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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.

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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!

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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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