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In 2023 the ad agency Design Army created an entire campaign using only generative AI. In it, a world of impossible buildings, floating hats, and gigantic eyeballs announces the opening of a high-end eyewear retailer.

As Design Army cofounder Pum Lefebure explained, “in a typical project like this, we would hire models, makeup artists, and wardrobe specialists, scout and secure shoot locations, and ultimately it would take at least three months to execute.” But the budget was tight and time was short, so they turned to AI. Though there’s a touch of uncanny valley in the resulting imagery, the visuals are impressive.

Always aiming for faster output and grander scale, leaders across industries are excited about the potential for this new tech. But AI technology raises real concerns for the creatives whose original work could be replaced or copied by these tools.

Creativity is an essential part of who we are as human beings. In the creation narrative, when the first human is tasked with cultivating the Garden (Gen. 2:5–8, 15), we see that making is a God-given privilege and responsibility. It’s a calling generative AI threatens to undermine. We are robbing ourselves of this gift of toil—the creative process of ideating, developing, and producing—when we take too many shortcuts or automate our work.

As the opening lines of Genesis make clear, right after God completes the aspects of creation that he alone is capable of, he invites humankind to pick up where he left off. For example, God doesn’t create all of humanity in an instant; he makes only two humans and then tasks them with making more of themselves through bearing children and forming families.

To accomplish these tasks, God didn’t give humans his unique power to generate new things simply by speaking them into existence. He gave humans the purpose of joining in the ongoing work of creation. We see this again and again throughout the biblical story line. He tasks humankind with making things themselves (Ex. 31:1­-11; 1 Sam. 16:16–18). It is in God’s generosity that we are handed the paintbrush and invited to join the process.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God uses the trials, tedium, mistakes, victories, and lessons of life to refine us into the image of Christ. It is not done in an instant, however much we want to rush to the final result. It is through an often-lengthy process that we become who God intended us to be and our work becomes what God ordained.

Many have discussed whether or not radiation from cell phones causes cancer. Author Douglas Fields writes about the fact that some people are fearful of radiation from their cell phones, but that fear indicates the lack of understanding in regard to dosage:

There is a vast difference, for example, between a microwave oven and a cell phone. Just try cooking a burger with your phone. The word “radiation” strikes fear in the heart of the average person. But radiation is a normal part of our environment, cast down on us together with the warming rays of the sun. Radiation emanates from the smoke detectors in our homes and from dishes that use uranium salts in their ceramic pigments. But all are perfectly safe because the radiation levels are low.

Still, some are skeptical and they recommend not allowing children to use cell phones except in emergencies, and to avoid carrying cell phones on the body. Fields points out:

The debate and research go on. This seems strange given the abundance of known agents and activities that do cause cancer but fail to strike the same fear in the hearts of most people. Alcohol, tobacco, sunburn, toxic organic chemicals in industrial and home products are all real but accepted risk. Yet the cell phone and invisible radiation from power lines scare many. Looked at objectively, the reason is simply fear of the unknown. Everyone understands alcohol and sunburn; few understand radiation, and so they fear it.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Christians wonder, how serious is friendship with their world? How much sin will hurt me? How can I be in the world but not of the world? Low doses of sin can be overlooked, but they can combine for a very serious effect in our spiritual lives.

Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. In the early 20th century, many people were pursuing the dream of flight. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume, to be the recipe for success. Langley was given $50,000 by the War Department to figure out this flying machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard and worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected; he knew all the big minds of the day. He hired the best minds money could find and the market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?

A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, had none of what we consider to be the recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a single person on the Wright brothers' team had a college education, not even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York Times followed them around nowhere.

The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the course of the world. Samuel Pierpont Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, look what happened. The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just worked for the paycheck. They tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they would have to take five sets of parts, because that's how many times they would crash before supper.

And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was there to even experience it. We found out about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was motivated by the wrong thing: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said, "That's an amazing discovery, guys, and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit.

One afternoon while walking through the Norfolk General Hospital, Dr. Hugh Litchfield heard his name being called from across the lobby. As a man approached, he asked; “Hi, Dr. Litchfield, remember me?”

About 10 years earlier the young man had visited the church where Dr. Litchfield was serving. He was facing possible jail time over tax violations. This had led to alcohol dependency, which had in turn jeopardized his marriage and his relationship with is children. His life was in a desperate shape.

Dr. Litchfield explains the interaction in his book Visualizing the Sermon:

He then said to me in that lobby, "I want to thank you." "For what?" "One Sunday you preached a sermon about taking responsibility for our lives, not to blame what we become on somebody else. God used that sermon to speak to me. That afternoon I got down on my knees and prayed to God and promised to take responsibility for my life. With God's help, I did. Since that time, life has been great. I got out of trouble with the IRS, I became the master over the bottle, my marriage is better than ever. I want to thank you."

As he left me standing there, I was overwhelmed by what he had told me. . . When I went back to the office, I dug down into my sermon files to get out that sermon that had meant so much to him. Early in my ministry, on Monday morning I would jot down a phrase or two at the top of my sermon manuscript as to how I felt the sermon had gone on Sunday. For that sermon, I glanced at what I had written. "Dead in the water! No one listened! A waste of time!"

Dr. Litchfield concludes, “I have learned something along the way. If we offer faithfully to God what we have, somehow it will be used in magnificent ways. We must never underestimate what God will do with what we give.”

In Chase the Lion, Mark Batterson writes that in 1983 Lorne Whitehead published an article about the domino chain reaction. You can picture it in your mind, can't you? You knock over a domino, and it sets off a chain reaction that can knock down hundreds of dominoes in a matter of seconds. But the unique significance of Whitehead's research was discovering that a domino is capable of knocking over a domino that is one-and-a-half times its size. So a two-inch domino can topple a three-inch domino. A three-inch domino can topple a four-and-a-half-inch domino. And a four-and-a-half-inch domino can topple a … well, you get the point.

By the time you get to the eighteenth domino, you could knock over the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Of course, it's leaning so that's not fair. The twenty-third domino could knock over the Eiffel Tower. And by the time you get to the twenty-ninth domino, you could take down the Empire State Building.

In the realm of mathematics, there are two types of progression: linear and geometric. Linear progression is two plus two equals four. Geometric progression is compound doubling. Two times two equals four. If you take thirty linear steps, you're ninety feet from where you started. But if you take thirty geometric steps, you've circled the earth twenty-six times!

Faith isn't linear. Faith is geometric. Every decision we make, every step of faith we take, has a chain reaction. And those chain reactions set off a thousand chain reactions we aren't even aware of. They won't be revealed until we reach the other side of the space-time continuum.

In 1912, medical missionary Dr. William Leslie went to live and minister to tribal people in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After 17 years he returned to the U.S. a discouraged man, believing he failed to make an impact for Christ. He died nine years after his return.

But in 2010 a team led by Eric Ramsey with Tom Cox World Ministries made a surprising discovery. They found a network of reproducing churches hidden like glittering diamonds in the dense jungle across the Kwilu River from Vanga, where Dr. Leslie was stationed.

Based on his previous research, Ramsey thought the Yansi in this remote area might have some exposure to the name of Jesus, but no real understanding of who he is. They were unprepared for their remarkable find. "When we got in there, we found a network of reproducing churches throughout the jungle," Ramsey reports. "Each village had its own gospel choir, although they wouldn't call it that," he notes. "They wrote their own songs and would have sing-offs from village to village." They found a church in each of the eight villages they visited scattered across 34 miles. They also found a 1000-seat stone "cathedral" that often got so crowded in the 1980s—with many walking miles to attend—that a church planting movement began in the surrounding villages.

Apparently, Dr. Leslie traveled throughout this remote region, teaching the Bible and promoting literacy. He also started the first organized educational system in these villages, Ramsey learned. For seventeen years, Ramsey fought tropical illnesses, charging buffaloes, armies of ants, and leopard-infested jungles to bring the gospel into a remote area. He died feeling like he had failed, but instead his faithfulness and courage left a powerful legacy of vital churches.

When a mountain is in your way what do you do? Just ask Ramchandra Das, 53, who lives in Bihar, India. In order to access nearby fields for food and work, Das and his fellow villagers had to take a 4.3-mile trek around a mountain. Fed up with the obstacle, Das did something about it. With just a hammer and chisel, he cut a 33-foot-long, 13-foot-wide tunnel through a narrow area of the mountain. It took Das fourteen years to complete the task. And get this: Das isn't the first person to do such a thing. He was inspired by another villager who cut a 393 feet-long, 33 feet-wide, 26 feet-high passage through another mountain so that villagers could reach a local hospital. That man was motivated to do so when his wife died because he was unable to get her to the hospital.

Theologians use a phrase to talk about how Christ-followers are already redeemed but will not experience the fullness of redemption until they live with God in heaven. The phrase is, "The already and the not yet." How does that work exactly?

A little girl in England, Josie Caven, was born profoundly deaf. Growing up, she often felt isolated because of her inability to hear, but that changed after receiving a cochlear implant during the Christmas season. At the age of 12, she heard clearly for the first time. The first sound she heard was the song "Jingle Bells" coming from the radio.

Was Josie's hearing restored? Yes—completely. Was she hearing well immediately? Not exactly. Her mother said, "She is having to learn what each new sound is and what it means. She will ask, 'Was that a door closing?' and has realized for the first time that the light in her room hums when it is switched on. She even knows what her name sounds like now, because before she could not hear the soft 'S' sound in the middle of the word. Seeing her face light up as she hears everything around her is all I could have wished for this Christmas."

Josie's hearing was restored, but that restoration introduced her to the daily adventure of learning to distinguish each new sound in the hearing world. It's the already, and the not yet.

Already on the operating room table and moments from an abortion, Anna Chernocke made a life-changing decision—she backed out.

The U.K.'s Daily Mail carries the story:

Minutes away from having the abortion she thought she wanted, each second felt like a second closer to murder rather than the blessed relief she had imagined. Overwhelmed with guilt and fighting back tears, she was led by two nurses into the operating theater. The doctor, a fatherly-looking man in his 50s, was sitting, waiting for her. He was kind, reassuring.

"Anna," he said. "Are you ready? If so, we will give you a little injection in the back of your hand and transfer you to the table. Is there anything you would like to say?"

"Yes," replied Anna. "I'm really sorry, but I've changed my mind."

But instead of being annoyed with her for wasting their time, the medical team seemed to be overcome with a sudden, unexpected euphoria. The doctor broke out into a huge smile, grabbed her shoulder, and laughed, "Congratulations! Well done; you won't regret it."

The article goes on to share the story of the child's birth. In July 2004, Chernocke gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. In her words:

"The day David was born was overwhelming. It was a very difficult labor, but the moment I saw him I felt instant love.

"Even though I was exhausted and connected to drips, the minute he cried, I would get out of bed and go to him.

"He really is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I still feel guilty that he could have so easily not been here."

Today, Anna's son, David, is a lively toddler with blond hair and blue eyes who eagerly awaits the birth of his younger brother. And just as the doctor promised, Anna has never regretted her decision.

Stefania Fraccalvieri now knows that tongue piercing costs a lot more than expected. Just after she had a metal stud put through her tongue—a popular fashion trend among teenagers—Stefania began to experience sharp, stabbing pains in her face that lasted up to half a minute, 20-30 times a day. Doctors soon diagnosed her with trigeminal neuralgia, a condition more commonly known as "suicide disease" because of the intense pain it causes. The metal stud she had implanted was apparently rubbing up against a nerve that runs along the jaw and is connected to the trigeminal nerve (a large nerve in the human head).

Stefania's condition is just one of many complications due to tongue piercing. Those who opt for the extra hardware in their mouth can get a tetanus infection, heart complications, brain abscesses, chipped teeth, and receding gums.

So how did doctors cure Ms. Fraccalvieri of her condition? They first prescribed the usual array of painkillers. Then they moved on to stronger medications. Finally, they tried the solution that was seemingly most obvious: they removed the metal stud from the girl's tongue, and in a matter of a few days, all was well again.

Dr. George Moore was a young public health worker who was among the first westerners sent to Nepal in 1952. He found a nation that was very backward. There was only one hospital, and that was for the royalty. Life expectancy was 35 years. Ninety-eight percent of the population never had any medical treatment in their short lives—no doctors or medicine, ever.

Moore and his colleague began by attacking malaria, a devastating killer, by spraying the inside of huts with insecticide. But their second major challenge, smallpox, was more difficult. Smallpox vaccine must be refrigerated, and in the early 1950s, there was no way to get refrigerators to primitive villages.

Then Moore struck on a plan. He finally got a small batch of vaccine from the U. S. and stored it in the small kerosene refrigerator at his base camp. Then, using that vaccine, he inoculated some small boys, and took those boys with him to the villages.

When someone is inoculated with smallpox vaccine, they get a very mild case of the disease—too mild to make them sick, but strong enough to give them permanent immunity. They also develop a smallpox blister at the point of the injection.

So, Dr. Moore brought the vaccinated boys with him to the villages. Then he would break their smallpox blister, dip the end of a string into the blister, and then touch that infected string to a small opening in the skin of the person he wanted to protect. And that was how the assault on the killer disease was begun.

Hope is always made more real when we see tangible action today that points with credibility to the possibility of a better tomorrow.

In the darkest days of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, Jeremiah was asked by God to go out and buy a piece of real estate—complete with witnesses, a deed, and money exchanged (Jer. 32:6–15). This was a tangible act and one that seemed to make no sense. But in 70 years, as God reminds Jeremiah, a captive people would be set free and returned to the land, rebuilding homes and reconstituting vineyards. Shelter and food–there is nothing more tangible, and Jeremiah's purchase of land was designed to provide a beacon of hope during the long years of captivity.

My father, at the age of 75, planted a number of very small fruit trees. "What an optimist," I said to him, somewhat mockingly. Dad passed away a few years ago, and now when I return to the old homestead, I have an option. I can go to the grassy cemetery on top of the hill and brood over his grave, or I can eat the fruit of his trees and reflect on a man who knew a great deal about hope.

In the 19th century, Marie d'Agoult left her children to follow after the most famous pianist of her day, Hungarian composer and virtuoso Franz Liszt. After the ardor of her infatuation cooled and the reality of missing her children set in, Marie is said to have made this observation: "When one has smashed everything around oneself, one has also smashed oneself."

Legendary British philosopher and atheist Antony Flew turned from atheism at the age of 81. A noted critic of God's existence for several decades, Flew published books like God and Philosophy and The Presumption of Atheism.

Dr. Gary Habermas, prolific philosopher and historian from Liberty University, has debated Professor Flew several times, and they have maintained a friendship despite many years of disagreement over the existence of God.

Habermas interviewed Flew in 2004. A piece of their discussion follows:

Habermas: Which arguments for God's existence did you find most persuasive?

Flew: I think that the most impressive arguments for God's existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries…. I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than when I first met it.

Research has revealed that worker ants sacrifice time and efficiency in order to teach other ants how to find food—a practice that is beneficial for the society as a whole.

When a female ant of the species Temnothorax albipennis goes out to find food, she will often choose another ant to accompany her. If the second ant doesn't know the way to the food source, the leader will teach her through a process called "tandem running." As the teacher runs along the path to food, the student follows behind and will often stop to locate landmarks—creating a gap between herself and the leader. When the student is ready, she will run forward and tap her teacher on her back legs.

This process is extremely beneficial for the student. Ants participating in tandem running located a food source in an average of 201 seconds, while ants searching for food on their own took an average of 310 seconds (a 35 percent difference). However, the process is detrimental to the teachers. Research indicated that the lead ants traveled up to four times faster when they were not accompanied by a student.

So why do the leaders sacrifice their time and efficiency to teach others? According to study leader Nigel Franks, "They are very closely related nest mates and their society as a whole will benefit." This occurs as the students gradually learn their way and are able to teach other ants, which increases the efficiency of the entire population.

Indeed, researchers also observed that some teacher-ants would simply carry a follower on their backs and drop them off at the food source. This technique was three times faster than tandem running. However, the carried ants were not able to remember how to get back to the food source—probably because they were upside down and backwards.

Stephen G. Post, professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, recently headed a comprehensive study of altruism where he evaluated 50 scientific studies of people who regularly volunteered their time.

One of the studies, from Cornell University, spent 30 years following 427 women who were married and had children. Researchers found that only 36 percent of women who regularly volunteered had experienced a major illness, while 52 percent of those who never volunteered had a major illness. Post writes, "Surprisingly, they found that numbers of children, education, class, and work status did not affect longevity."

Other studies indicated that those who volunteered their time lived longer than those who didn't. In fact, people who volunteered frequently had a 44 percent reduction in early death when compared to non-volunteers.

Scientists also identified precise areas of the brain that are highly active during empathic and compassionate emotions. Commenting on these areas, Post said:

This is extremely important. This is the care-and-connection part of the brain. It is a very different part of the brain than is active with romantic love. These brain studies show this profound state of joy and delight that comes from giving to others. It doesn't come from any dry action—where the act is out of duty in the narrowest sense, like writing a check for a good cause. It comes from working to cultivate a generous quality— from interacting with people. There is the smile, the tone in the voice, the touch on the shoulder. We're talking about altruistic love.

"I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz (Steve Wozniak) and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation—the Macintosh—a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating….

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

On July 30, 1945, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis was returning from a mission delivering enriched uranium to allied forces in the Pacific. It did not make it home. A Japanese torpedo hit the cruiser on its way back. It sank in minutes. In only 12 minutes, 300 of the 1,200 men died. Nine hundred went into the water, enduring four days and five nights without food, without water, and under the blazing sun of the Pacific. Of the 900 men that went into the water, only 316 survived the lack of water and the sharks. One of those who survived was the chief medical officer, who recorded his own experience. He wrote:

There was nothing I could do, nothing I could do but give advice, bury the dead at sea, save the lifejackets, and try to keep the men from drinking the water. When the hot sun came out, and we were in this crystal clear ocean, we were so thirsty. You couldn't believe it wasn't good enough to drink. I had a hard time convincing the men they shouldn't drink. The real young ones…you take away their hope, you take away their water and food, they would drink the salt water and they would go fast. I can remember striking the ones who were drinking the salt water to try to stop them. They would get dehydrated, then become maniacal. There were mass hallucinations. I was amazed how everyone would see the same thing. One man would see something, and then everyone else would see it. Even I fought the hallucinations off and on. Something always brought me back.

In Shepherd Leadership, authors McCormick and Davenport remind Christian leaders to allow for second chances and gently restore the fallen. They write:

Thomas Edison filed an impressive 1,093 patents with the U.S. Patent Office, and behind each one of those 1,093 successes lay hundreds and sometimes thousands of failures. Edison mastered the art of recovering from failure with lessons in hand and sought to pass it on to his workers. Near the end of his career, a former worker, Alfred Tate, penned the following letter to his former boss: "Above all you taught me not to be afraid of failure; that scars are sometimes as honorable as medals."