Profligate Generosity

by Jared Johnson

Every few years, oak trees near each other will grow and drop several times more acorns than their forest critter neighbors could possibly eat, thereby ensuring some will take root and repopulate their environs.  

If you’re an avid marine diver, maybe you have seen a mass, synchronous coral spawn, when typically clear ocean water goes cloudy with billions of coral gametes and larva, off to find themselves new spots to which to anchor and grow.  

Our sun delivers more energy to our planet in one hour than all of humanity uses through all energy types (gas, coal, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc.) in an entire year. (We get roughly 430,000,000,000,000,000 kilojoules worldwide per hour from solar energy; just 1 kilojoule is about what it takes to lift an average size man 3 ft.)  

Each night, even if you live in a chronically “light-polluted” locale, you can see stars. We can see billions of light-years out from us in all directions. Said another way, we can see, through telescopes, about this many cubic light-years (observable universe’s volume): 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. 

In all that incomprehensibly, ludicrously huge space, there are billions, trillions, of stars, galaxies, dust clouds, black holes, quasars ... and planets.  

And yet, in all that vastness, so far as we know, there are no other intelligent life forms besides we humans, made in God’s image, hurtling along on this beautiful Blue Marble He gave us. 

Did He really need to put so much space around us to sustain our little ball of rock? (And by “little” I mean 13 “heptillion” pounds worth [13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lbs].)  

Do oaks and other trees each need to dump thousands of seeds every few years? Do corals (some fish, too), need to fill the ocean with eggs just so some carry on as a new generation? Did space need to be so huge just to let our one lonely little star system work just as it does to sustain us and so much bustling life all around us?  

I can’t book-chapter-verse a definitive “yes” or “no,” but I have my suspicion: probably not.  

Thesis: God is profligate. He is wildly, abundantly, lavishly extravagant in His provision for us (definition of profligate).  

Is there any other way to describe a Creator who made an existence that’s so ... full?  

Jesus told a story about a farmer who was – and there’s no other way to say it – profligate in his seed-sowing. Ancient people weren’t dumb. They knew throwing good seeds on a hard path was abject waste. And yet, Jesus told His story (Matthew 13) as He did for perfectly good reasons. Evidently, it was more important to throw seeds “out there” and just see what would happen than it was to keep close control, think and act stingy, and only put seeds where they were supposedly likely to grow, or even “deserved.”  

When I heard a preacher talking about Jesus’s parable in those terms recently, it reminded me of another teacher’s comments.  

Send your grain across the seas, and in time, profits will flow back to you. ... Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profits will come from one activity or another – or maybe both.  

Ecclesiastes 11.1, 6 

Both Solomon and Jesus say, more or less, “Throw seeds out there; just keep trying and trying in all kinds of ways because you don’t know what’ll ‘pay off’ later.” Paul followed his King’s directive and did just that, throwing innumerable Good News “seeds” everywhere around him all across Asia Minor, SE Europe and more. Some of those seeds took root (Lydia, a jailer, some Galatians...), but a whole lot didn’t (“Then the crowd shouted, ‘Away with him – he isn’t fit to live!’” [Acts 22.22]). 

God is profligate; is it scandalous to say so?  

It wouldn’t be the first time we have been scandalized by God’s profligate generosity. 

“Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us, who worked all day in the scorching heat.”  

He answered one of them, “Friend, I haven’t been unfair! Didn’t you agree to work all day for the usual wage? Take your money and go. I wanted to pay this last worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?”  

Matthew 20.12-15  

It’s really not too much to also hear that last line as “Should you be jealous because I’m generous?”  

Well, no, I shouldn’t be jealous of His kindness and generosity, but...  

“The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’ 

“His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’” 

Luke 15.28-32 

God’s profligate generosity toward us is evident to me in physical ways. But He’s also profligate – lavishly, wildly extravagant – in His gracious disposition to His Creation. I remember that side of the equation far less often.  

We worship a generous, giving, sacrificial, even profligate God. 

...I’ll open the windows of heaven for you. I’ll pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! 

Malachi 3.10

...My cup overflows with blessings.  

Psalm 23.5

I know that my Creator will take care of all your needs from the great treasures of his beauty through the Chosen One, Jesus. 

Philippians 4.19 (First Nations Version)