Category: Scripture Reflections

Meditations on specific passages, listening for the whisper of God’s voice in the text.

Advent: Maybe Christ Is Waiting For Us

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

Advent is usually described as a season of waiting.
Waiting for Christ.
Waiting for light.
Waiting for hope.
Waiting for God to draw near.

But I have begun to wonder if that might be the wrong way round. Because the more I sit with the story, the more I sit with Scripture, the more I sit with the strange and holy hunger of Advent, the more it feels like Christ is not the one who is slow.

Maybe Christ is already here. Maybe he has already arrived and keeps arriving.
Maybe the world is full of him and we simply have not caught up.

Maybe Advent is not waiting for God. Maybe Advent is God waiting for us.

The slow awakening of the human heart

When Paul tells the Ephesians to wake up from sleep so Christ will shine on them (Ephesians 5:14), he is not telling them to summon Christ from a distant place. He is urging them to open their eyes to a presence already at work. When Jesus says the kingdom is near and among you (Luke 17:21), he is not pointing to a future event on the horizon but to a reality already pressing against the surface of the world.

It is not that God has not come. It is that we have not yet learned how to see.

The Church has always spoken this way. The early fathers taught that the coming of Christ was not a moment locked in the past but a mystery that unfolds in every age. His birth is once for all, but his appearing keeps breaking open wherever hearts soften. Wherever we forgive (Matthew 6:14). Wherever we love without fear (1 John 4:18). Wherever the image of God in us pulls free from the dust (Genesis 1:26). Wherever humanity remembers what it was made to be. In these places Christ is born again.

This is not sentiment.
It is the pattern of salvation itself.

The God who is always arriving

We imagine Christ’s coming as if he moves and we sit still. But what if the deeper truth is that Christ moves in every direction at once and we are the ones struggling to move with him?

Advent hints at this.
The prophets speak of God drawing near (Isaiah 40:10), yes, but they also speak of people returning, lifting their heads, following the path back to the face of God (Isaiah 55:6–7). The story is mutual, relational, alive. James says draw near to God and he will draw near to you (James 4:8). Not as an ultimatum, but as the rhythm of communion. God moves. We move. God comes. We awaken.

Augustine once wrote that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. If that is true, then the Advent hope is not that Christ will one day close the gap. It is that He already has.

The long formation of the soul

Most of the time we do not see Christ clearly because we have not grown into the kind of humanity that can recognise him. He is not absent. We are unformed.

Like Israel in exile, we wait for freedom but carry the habits of captivity (Jeremiah 29:11–14). Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, we walk beside him but do not know his name (Luke 24:13–32). Like Mary in the garden, we think he is the gardener until he speaks (John 20:14–16).

Advent is the slow work of becoming attentive.
Advent is the discipline of desire becoming mature enough to discern God’s presence. Advent is the training of the eyes so that we can see the world as it truly is: full of God, held within God (Acts 17:28), moving towards God.

This is why the season emphasises repentance and preparation. Not because God is unwilling to come, but because receiving divine presence requires a heart that is being reshaped. The fathers said that God is always giving God’s self. The problem is not God’s giving. It is our capacity to receive.

Advent asks us to grow that capacity.

Christ in our midst

When Jesus promises that he will be with us always (Matthew 28:20), he is not speaking in metaphors. His presence fills creation and also dwells uniquely among his people. In the gathering of believers (Matthew 18:20), in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:30–31), in the quiet prayers whispered through tears (Romans 8:26), he is there. Not symbolically. Truly.

The Church is not the whole of his presence, but it is the place where his presence becomes visible, embodied, and communal. The early Christians called themselves the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27) because they believed something profound: Christ continues his life in and through the community that bears his name.

In other words, he has already come. He keeps coming in the world.
He keeps coming in the Church. He keeps coming in the human heart.

Christ is not running late.
Christ is waiting for us to join him.

The goal of all things

Advent stretches our desire toward the future. Toward a world renewed. Toward a humanity restored. Toward creation set free from its groaning (Romans 8:19–22). Toward the final unveiling of Christ in all things (Colossians 1:27).

But even this future is not passive waiting. Paul says creation groans as in labour pains. Something is being born. Something is coming to term. God is drawing all things toward fullness (Ephesians 1.9–10), and Christ is the centre of that movement. Everything bends toward union. Everything bends toward restoration. Everything bends toward the One who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17).

The promise is not that Christ will eventually arrive.
The promise is that all creation will eventually open its eyes and be made new (2 Corinthians 5:17, Revelation 21:5).

The end is not Christ drawing near.
The end is us becoming able to recognise the One who has always been near.

Advent as invitation

So perhaps this is the quiet scandal of Advent. We wait for Christ. And Christ waits for us.

He waits for us to trust that God is near.
He waits for us to grow into the likeness he planted within us (2 Corinthians 3.18).
He waits for our vision to sharpen.
He waits for our love to deepen.
He waits for our courage to rise.
He waits for our wounds to be healed.
He waits for our communities to become homes of mercy and fire.
He waits for us to finally recognise that the world is not empty but saturated with his presence.

Advent is not the countdown to God’s arrival. It is the training of the human gaze and heart.

It is the season where Christ says, again and again:
I am here.
Catch up.
Grow.
Wake.
Become.
Step into the fullness I have already begun in you.

Maybe the question is not:
When will Christ come?

Maybe the question is:
When will we become the kind of people who can see that he’s already here dwelling among us?

“The Saviour has already come to dwell among us, and still we must awaken, for only those who learn to see him now will more easily know him in the age to come.”
– St Athanasius, St Symeon the New Theologian

The Language of Life

scribblingtheologyLeave a comment
Abstract digital artwork of glowing sound waves transforming into rivers, trees, and stars against a dark cosmic background, symbolising words and speech as creation and life.

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up.”
Ephesians 4:29

Words are never just noise. They are breath given shape, soul exhaled. They move unseen but not unfelt, carrying weight like wind that bends trees or like fire that sets forests alight.

Too often we read Paul’s words here as if he were writing about manners. No swearing, no coarse language. Keep your speech tidy. But he is not warning about vocabulary. He is speaking about reality. Words carry power. They make or unmake. They can rot, corrode, and decay, or they can strengthen, shelter, and bring life.

The word Paul uses for “unwholesome” is sapros, the same word for rotten fruit. It is not simply impolite but decayed. Rotten speech infects, spreads mould, carries death within it. Words spoken in bitterness can poison a room. Sarcasm can chip away at the soul. Gossip can hollow out trust. This is what Paul warns against, not etiquette, but the slow rot of death.

In contrast, he says, let your words be for building. The tongue is a mortar or a hammer. With it, you can carve space for another to stand taller. With it, you can lay the foundations of belonging. With it, you can raise walls of shelter or tear them down. Each sentence is a brick laid either toward ruin or toward home.

We do ourselves a disservice when we shrink Paul’s words to mean “do not swear.” As if he were giving us a vocabulary list. The call is far more cosmic. Words are not about politeness. They are about creation.

Think of C. S. Lewis describing Aslan singing Narnia into being. The song itself carried trees into leaf, stars into burning, rivers into flowing. Or Tolkien’s Ilúvatar, who composed the great Music, and the world unfolded in its harmonies. These stories point us back to the truest one. The God of Genesis spoke light into being, called out the waters, named day and night, and breathed life into dust. Creation itself is worded into existence.

Poets know this better than most. They understand that words can open doors into the indescribable. A line of poetry can carry what paragraphs of prose cannot. A blessing spoken over the fire in a Celtic home was not ornament; it was survival and worship. To call down God’s presence over the most ordinary act was to stitch heaven and earth together with words.

When we speak blessings, we are not simply being kind. We are imaging the God in whose likeness we were made. Humanity was created to reflect him, to echo his ways into the world. He is the One who speaks light and light appears, who calls forth seas and stars, who breathes life into dust. His speech does not merely describe, it creates.

This is why rotten talk matters. Not because it is impolite, but because it denies who we are meant to be. And this is why blessing matters. Each time we speak hope, forgiveness, truth, or love, we mirror the God who spoke and it was so. Our tongues were made to echo his creative Word, to join him in bringing light out of darkness and life out of dust.

This echoes through Scripture. In Genesis, God speaks the world into being: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Proverbs tells us, “The tongue has the power of life and death” (Proverbs 18:21). James warns that “the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts… Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark” (James 3:5). He goes on to call it “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). John’s gospel goes further still, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). God does not just speak life into the world, he becomes the Word, dwelling within the world he called into being. If our speech is careless, it corrodes. If it is filled with grace, it participates in that same divine rhythm of creation and incarnation.

The mystics and saints knew this well. The Desert Fathers would spend days in silence, not because words were evil, but because words were heavy. They believed speech carried eternity in its syllables. St John of the Cross spoke of the need to keep words few, so that when they are spoken they carry the fragrance of heaven. The Celtic tradition spoke of blessing everything, lighting the fire, milking the cow, and closing the door at night. Words turned into prayers, words spoken as life poured over the ordinary. To speak was to join God in consecrating the world.

Think about the words that have most shaped your life. A teacher telling you that you had a gift. A friend who whispered, I am here. A parent who said, I love you. Perhaps, too, you carry words that wound, words that still echo years later. Both linger. Both shape the way you stand, the way you see yourself, the way you step into tomorrow.

This is why Paul urges us not to let rot fall from our mouths. To speak decay is to diminish the image of God in another. But to speak blessing is to water it, to call it forth, to give it space to bloom. When I say, you belong here, I am not merely transferring information. I am planting a seed of belonging. When I say, I forgive you, I am not just announcing a fact, I am opening a door to a new future. Words are sacramental. They are material things that carry invisible grace.

It matters in the ordinary. In how we speak to our children at the end of a long day. In how we address our partners in weariness or joy. In how we speak of others when they are not in the room. In how we comment online, in how we talk about people we disagree with, in how we handle the small irritations of life. Each moment carries a choice. Will I speak rot or life? Will my words corrode or build?

Think again of the power of a single phrase.
I forgive you.
You belong here.
You are not alone.
Peace be with you.

Each is more than air. Each is a doorway opening. Each is a world remade.

So may our mouths be more than noise. May our words become breath that lifts. May we learn the holy art of speaking life, until our speech itself becomes a kind of prayer.

The Ache of Beginnings: Reading Genesis 1–11 with Open Hands

scribblingtheologyLeave a comment
Two abstract silhouettes, male and female, stand together at twilight between a flourishing garden glowing with golden light and a barren wilderness of dry soil and thorns. The scene symbolises humanity east of Eden, caught between exile and communion with God.

Where did it all go wrong?

Genesis does not begin with a courtroom but with a garden. It does not give us a manual of origins but a story of longing, freedom, and fracture. These early chapters are less about when and more about why. They are not fossils of a world long gone but mirrors of our own. They speak of desire that bends, of Exile that begins, of God who keeps walking into the story anyway.

“In the beginning, God…” (Genesis 1:1). Before the ache, before the questions, there was only God. All that exists flows out of this life. Gregory of Nyssa said that only God truly has being in Himself, while all else exists only by participation. Creation is not necessary, but a gift. The beginning is not a moment in time but the eternal One whose presence holds everything in existence.

Wisdom desired, wisdom distorted

The tree was not poisonous. It was a possibility. Wisdom was always meant to be humanity’s inheritance, but in God’s time, not ours. In Genesis 3, the grasping of fruit is less about appetite and more about autonomy. To seize before its time is to make wisdom collapse into folly.

Paul would later write, “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19). The mystics often spoke of a wisdom that comes not by grasping but by surrender. True wisdom is received, not snatched. It ripens only in the soil of trust. To forget that all wisdom is participation in God is to fall back into Exile.

The question in the garden

When Adam and Eve hide, God does not thunder judgment first. He asks a question: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). It is the first question God asks in Scripture, and it has never stopped echoing. It is less a demand for location than a call to self-awareness. Where are you? Not just in the garden, but in your soul, in your wandering, in your ache.

The desert fathers and mothers taught that prayer begins not with words but with awareness. To stand before God is to hear that question again and again. Where are you? The psalmist answers, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7). Even in hiding, God is near. Even in Exile, our being still participates in Him.

Shame, blame, and the covering of God

We cover ourselves with fig leaves, then point fingers to deflect the weight of our shame. The first man blames the first woman. The first woman blames the serpent. This is the rhythm of fallen humanity: hiding, deflecting, excusing. But even here, grace intrudes. God does not leave them naked. “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21).

The covering is both tender and terrible. Tender, because it restores dignity. Terrible, because it hints at the cost of covering. Life surrendered for life preserved. The cross is already flickering in the shadows of Eden. To be clothed by God is to be reminded that even when we try to cover ourselves in fear, our true being remains grounded in Him.

The curse and the serpent

The serpent is not annihilated but transformed. Dust becomes its food, enmity its destiny. The curse is not a spell but a new pattern of existence. Relationships fracture. Creation distorts. Struggle is woven into soil and womb alike.

Yet even here, hope is stitched in. “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). A wound will remain, but victory will come. The first gospel is spoken over the dust. The Eastern fathers often called this the “protoevangelium”, the first glimmer of redemption. Even in curse, God remains the source of being, and from Him redemption begins to unfold.

Exile and the ache of humanity

To be human is to be east of Eden. To till soil that resists. To live under a curse and yet still carry promise. Adam names Eve “mother of all living,” even as death has entered the story (Genesis 3:20). Exile is unavoidable, but so is God’s relentless pursuit.

And yet, to be truly human is more than east of Eden. It is to walk in the cool of the day with God. It is to flourish in the garden, unashamed, at peace with creation, with self, and with one another. Exile names our condition. Communion names our calling.

Julian of Norwich once wrote, “Our soul is made of God and in God it is grounded.” To be human is to ache for that grounding. We evolve, not merely biologically but spiritually, socially, and theologically. From garden to city, from scattering to gathering, from Babel’s confusion to Pentecost’s tongues of fire. Humanity is still in process, but its being remains anchored in the One who was there in the beginning.

The ache of new creation

Genesis 1 to 11 is not just about what went wrong but about what God will set right. These are the seed-stories, and they lean forward. From the waters of the flood to the scattering at Babel, creation keeps unravelling. And yet the Spirit hovers still, waiting to call forth a new beginning.

Paul names Jesus the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), and John sees a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). The garden at the beginning becomes the city at the end, the Tree of Life reappearing, its leaves “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).

Gregory of Nyssa’s words echo here, too. Only God has being in Himself, and at the end, all creation will be drawn into that fullness. “In the beginning, God” will one day be heard again as “God all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). The end is a return to the beginning, to the One who called us into life.

We read these stories not as distant myths but as mirrors. They are the patterns we still live in: hiding, blaming, longing, wandering. But they are also the patterns of God: seeking, covering, promising, recreating.

Perhaps the most profound truth of Genesis 1 to 11 is not simply how the world began, but that God refuses to let the story end in Exile. The God who walks in the twilight of Eden still walks among us, still asks the old question, still whispers us toward new creation.

Running Between Worlds: A Poetic Retelling of Hebrews 11–12:2

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
Five shadowed figures walk along a narrow path through a golden field toward distant mountains, under a dark, moody sky.

I think of faith, and it feels like a pulse beneath the skin.
Not loud.
Not something you can point to.
Just the quiet certainty that what we hope for is already alive, even when the eyes see nothing.

This is how they lived, those who came before us.
They stepped forward into places they could not see.
They believed a voice that spoke before time began.
The world was called out of nothing, from what no hand could hold.

I remember Abel, whose blood still sings.
Enoch, who walked with God until the earth could no longer keep him.
Noah, hammering wood while the sky stayed clear.
Abraham, leaving the warmth of the known, set up tents in a land that was only his by promise.
Sarah, laughing at the thought, then held laughter itself in her arms.

The dying blesses the living.
The bound blessing the free.
The exiles blessed the land they had never touched.

Some saw seas open.
Some saw walls crumble.
Some silenced the mouths of lions.
Others felt the weight of chains, the teeth of the saw.
They wandered deserts, hid in caves, clothed in skins, strangers, the world was not worthy of.

And all of them died still looking forward,
eyes lit by a promise that waited for us too.

So here we are, surrounded by their presence,
their stories still breathing in the air around us.
We let go of what weighs us down.
We shake free from the sin that clings like a shadow.
We run, slow and steady, breath after breath,
our eyes on Jesus.

He is the one who began this faith.
He is the one who will bring it to completion.
For joy beyond the grave, He endured the cross.
He bore the shame and broke its hold.
And now He rests in light, at the right hand of God.

God in the Dark: After Psalm 97

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment

I used to think
that certainty was faith—
a sure thing, a clean answer,
a way of knowing
without the waiting.

But the text says
clouds and thick darkness
are around Him,
which means
whatever throne He sits on
is hidden—
not because He is cruel,
but because He is close
in a way that won’t be tamed.

It says righteousness and justice
are the foundation,
not visibility.
Not control.
Not clarity.

So now I wonder
if faith is less about knowing
and more about trusting
the One
who sometimes stays behind the smoke,
but never leaves the room.

And maybe this is how
He teaches us—
not with thunder,
but with the stillness
that follows.
Not with a map,
but with a presence
that unsettles
and also holds.

Maybe certainty
was never the point.
Maybe love is.
And maybe
that’s enough
to worship in the dark.