Category: poetry

Contemplative Christian poetry—Celtic hints, biblical echoes, everyday wonder.

The Wide Work of Christ

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Through him God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself
things on earth and things in heaven
making peace through the blood of his cross.

Not some things.
Not only the worthy things.
All things.

The hidden fracture in the world
the quiet estrangement in the human heart
the long ache of history
the violence we inherit and the wounds we carry
none of it lies outside the reach of Christ.

The cross is not a narrow doorway for a few
but the deep center where everything broken is gathered.

Here hostility is unmade.
Here distance is crossed.
Here even what resists love is slowly surrounded by it.

The peace of Christ is not fragile agreement
but a steady, patient restoring
like roots pressing through hard soil
like light finding its way into a closed room.

And so reconciliation is not only a doctrine to believe
but a reality to inhabit.

We learn to live as those already being gathered
already being healed
already being brought home.

The cross stands at the center of all things
not as a sign of defeat
but as the quiet place where the world is being made whole.

Benediction: Go in Awe

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Go in awe

Not awe at a distance, or awe in that of a spectacle, but real awe that comes
when the everlasting God draws near to share our dustiness.

Go in awe

of the real Jesus Christ
not an idea to be managed
or a symbol to be admired,
but God in flesh,
breathing our air,
walking our ground,
carrying our humanity.

The God through whom all things were made
did not stand outside the world and call it back.
He stepped into it.
Into time.
Into history.
Into skin and bone, hunger and rest.

This is how God chose to love.
Not from above,
but from within.

God did not heal humanity
by replacing it.
He healed it
by joining Himself to it.
By binding divine life
to human life so closely
that nothing human is left untouched,
and nothing broken is left outside His care.

Go in awe

remembering
that the first word of this good news
was spoken in the dark,
to the watchful and the waiting.
Glory opened the night
not in halls of power
but in open fields.
Peace was announced
not as control,
but as presence.

This is the peace that mends what power cannot.
The peace that gathers what has been scattered.
The peace that restores the world
by healing it from the inside.

In Jesus,
God has said yes
to the earth,
yes to flesh,
yes to humanity,
and yes to the long work
of making all things new.

Nothing is abandoned.
No place is empty of God.
No human life exists
outside the reach of His nearness.

Go in awe


as people shaped by this good news.
Let it steady your fear,
soften your judgement,
and widen your mercy.

Go bearing witness
not by force,
but by faithfulness.
Not by escape,
but by presence.
Not by standing above the world,
but by standing within it.

And may the God
who came to be with us
remain with you,
among you, in you
and ahead of you,
until heaven and earth are gathered as one,
and all things are restored
in Him.

Amen.

My Burden

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Jesus said,
my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
I want to believe him,
but most days
the burden feels like stone.

The burden of anxiety,
the burden of belief,
the burden of trying to be human
when I am tired,
so tired.

If this is light,
what does heavy feel like?

And yet,
he keeps whispering, “Come, walk with me,
learn the rhythm of gentleness,
tie your tired shoulders
to mine.”

Maybe the lightness
is not in the absence of weight
but in the presence of love.
Maybe the rest is not escape
but the slow discovery
that I am not alone in the carrying.

There are still crosses,
still losses,
still days when being human
feels heavier than faith.
But if he is beside me
then even the heavy
can be held.

So I take a breath,
take a step,
and say,
teach me again
how to be human
under your light burden
that does not feel light

Hard to Pray

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

The prayer I can’t quite pray yet

I keep meaning to say something to you, God.
Or maybe not to you.
Maybe at you.
But then I stop.
It catches somewhere in my chest.

It is not that I do not believe.
I do.
Probably too much.
It just hurts in ways I do not know what to do with.

If you are listening
and I keep hoping you are
you would hear all of it.
The sharpness in my voice.
The tiredness tucked in my bones.
That little stone in my coat pocket
I have carried since winter started.
It is smoothed down now
from my fingers rubbing it.

I do not want this to be prayer.
I want prayer to sound like afternoons when I was ten,
playing video games with the window open,
Tracey Chapman’s voice spilling from the stereo,
and Mum cleaning in the background,
the smell of dust and polish drifting into the room.

But this is all I have
bits of half sentences
silences that keep stretching
the weight of this stone in my pocket.

If you are there
and I guess you already know if you are
then you know
this is the best I can manage
today.

The Long Night

scribblingtheologyLeave a comment

Sheol saw me and was shattered, and Death ejected me and many with me. I measured its depth and I was not held captive, for I became a light to those who were in its depths.”

– (Ode 42)

He walked the long night

where no prayers reach,

where silence is thicker than stone.

Sheol held its breath.

The tomb was not still—

it trembled.

He wore no armor

but the memory of light.

He sang no song

but still the gates cracked.

One by one

He called the names of the forgotten.

Dust stirred.

Chains rusted.

Even Death blinked and turned

its face away,

unable to hold Him

who had measured its depth

and found it shallow.

– (a poem I wrote inspired by Ode) The Long Night