Tag: Faith

The Contemplative Gospel Part I: Creation, Fall, and Our Lost Communion with God

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
Abstract contemplative artwork of two glowing human silhouettes beneath a starry night sky, their bodies filled with starlight. Beside them stands a lone tree, half in shadow and half in light. Near the tree, a larger silhouette made of starlight represents God walking with them. The scene is cosmic, sacred, and symbolic, in deep blues, purples, and gold.

The Gospel Begins with Wonder, Not Sin

The gospel does not begin with sin. It begins with wonder.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). From the first moment, creation was spoken into being within God’s own presence. Life emerged as song, at his call, not apart from him but held inside his life. Mountains rose and oceans gathered, their beauty already shimmering with his nearness.

And then God stooped low, pressing his breath into dust. Humanity came alive, not only because of lungs and blood, but because every heartbeat throbbed with the life of God. As Paul would later say, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

The world has never existed outside of God. We dwell in him, even as he dwells in us. Every breath you take is not just survival. It is communion.

Created to Share in the Divine Life

“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). From the beginning, we were not just creatures surviving on borrowed breath. We were made as mirrors of the divine, meant to shine with another’s glory.

The apostle Peter writes, “we were made to be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Creation is not simply about survival or usefulness. It is about communion. It is about living our lives inside the very life of God.

Irenaeus of Lyons once said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive, and the life of the human consists in beholding God.” That is creation’s secret. We were meant to live every breath as communion, every heartbeat as sacrament. The mystics remind us again and again that the world is charged with God. Meister Eckhart could say that every creature is “a word of God and a book about God.” Before sermons, before catechisms, creation itself was already preaching. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

What would it look like to see creation, the tree outside your window, the face across the table, as a word of God spoken to you?

The Fracture of the Fall

But then the story bends.

The serpent’s whisper is subtle. “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). The tragedy is that likeness to God was already our inheritance. What could have been received through communion, we tried to seize through grasping. What was meant to be given in love, we reached for in desire.

And in the reaching, something broke. Their eyes opened, but not to glory. Only to shame (Genesis 3:7). Hearts that once lived open to God turned inward and hid from the Presence that still walked in the garden (Genesis 3:8). Communion became exile.

Sin as Broken Communion and Blindness

For the mystic, sin is not simply breaking rules. It is breaking communion. Augustine captures it in his Confessions: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Restlessness is the echo of what we lost. It is the ache of a heart turned from the fountain of life, thirsting for water while standing beside the spring. Jeremiah gave it his own words: “My people have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

Gregory of Nyssa, the great contemplative, saw humanity as created for an endless ascent into God. Our destiny was always to go deeper into beauty without end. But in the fall, our gaze turned from the Infinite to ourselves. We lost our horizon. We curved inwards. The soul that was meant to climb into God instead closed in on itself.

This is why the mystics often speak of sin as blindness. John of the Cross wrote of the dark night, when the soul cannot perceive the light even though it surrounds her. That is Eden’s exile. The Presence never left. The light still shines in the darkness, but our eyes have forgotten how to see it (John 1:5).

God’s Presence Remains After the Fall

And yet, even here, grace remains.

God does not abandon Adam and Eve to their shame. He clothes them with garments (Genesis 3:21). He keeps walking, keeps calling: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). This is not the cry of a detective chasing criminals. It is the voice of a lover searching for his beloved. Even in exile, God follows. Even in our turning, he does not turn.

Julian of Norwich, reflecting on human sin, once heard Christ speak these words to her: “Sin is behovely, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” For her, sin was not the end. It was the place where mercy would be revealed.

We are dust, but dust still held by God’s breath. We are exiles, but never outside his gaze. The wound is real, but so is the promise. The God who made us to share in his own life will not rest until we do.

A Contemplative Practice

Take a few minutes today to sit quietly. Place your hand on your chest. Feel your breath rise and fall. With each inhale, pray: “In You I live.” With each exhale, pray: “In You I rest.”

As you breathe, remember that the first breath you ever received was God’s. Even in exile, his life still holds you.

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.

Faith and Mental Health, Part One: The Ache of Faith

scribblingtheologyLeave a comment
A lone figure walks a winding path beneath a dark sky, passing a solitary tree, with distant hills fading into shadow.

See part II here

Faith isn’t always a song. Sometimes it’s silence. Sometimes it’s the weight in your chest or the prayer that doesn’t come out.

I wrote recently about how it can be hard to pray. That post came from the same place this one does: the collision of my faith, my own deconstruction, and my mental health. Depression and anxiety are not just private struggles for me. They press into the very practices I was taught to depend on: prayer, worship, and even reading Scripture.

When the Practices Don’t Come Easy

For a long time, I thought faith meant doing all the “Christian stuff” without faltering. Show up. Pray hard. Read daily. Worship freely. But when depression clouds over, prayer feels impossible. When anxiety tightens my chest, sitting still with Scripture feels unbearable.

Deconstruction only complicates it. The simple answers don’t work anymore. The sermons I once leaned on feel too neat. And so, I find myself in the strange space of still wanting God, believing, but struggling to do the very things that once marked faith.

Maybe that’s you, too. And perhaps you need to hear this: it is okay if faith feels hard. It is okay if you can’t pray like you used to. It is okay if your anxiety follows you into worship.

The Bible Doesn’t Hide This Struggle

Scripture gives us permission to feel this tension.

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” (Psalm 42:5)

“You have taken from me friend and neighbour. Darkness is my closest friend.” (Psalm 88:18)

Job curses the day of his birth (Job 3:1–3).

Elijah collapses under a broom tree and prays, “I have had enough, Lord. Take my life.” (1 Kings 19:4).

Jeremiah laments bitterly: “Cursed be the day I was born.” (Jeremiah 20:14).

And Jesus himself says in the garden, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Matthew 26:38).

If this is in the Bible, then you have permission to bring your sorrow too. You do not have to hide it or cover it with worship songs you can’t sing.

When Faith Becomes a Weapon

There is another layer to all this. It is not just the depression or the anxiety or the silence of God. It is the voices around you.

“If you prayed more, you wouldn’t feel this way.”

“If you just trusted God, the anxiety would go away.”

“Maybe you’re not as faithful as you think you are.”

I have heard those lines. Sometimes out loud. Sometimes in the quiet judgments that float in church air. They land heavily. Because if you are already depressed, those words do not lift you. They bury you. Suddenly, it is not just your mental health you are fighting; it is the shame that you have somehow failed God by being human.

This is spiritual gaslighting. It turns faith into a weapon. It tells you that God is measuring your serotonin levels and writing them down as proof of your devotion. That is not gospel. That is cruelty dressed up in religious language.

The Bible never says, “the faithful never falter.” What it does say is that “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18). What it does say is that Christ himself was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3).

So let me say it plainly. You are allowed to be a Christian with depression. You are allowed to follow Jesus while anxious. You are allowed to belong even if you never get “better.”

The Weight We Carry and the Silence of God

Depression changes how the brain works. Anxiety floods the body. Trauma plants itself deep in memory. None of this is weakness. But it makes faith practices like prayer, silence, and Scripture feel like mountains you do not have the energy to climb.

And when God seems silent on top of it, the weight doubles. Prayer feels like speaking into an empty room.

That silence is not new. Israel wandered in it for forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2). The exiles sat by Babylon’s rivers, asking how they could sing the songs of Zion in a strange land (Psalm 137:1–4). Four hundred years of silence stretched between Malachi and Matthew. And then Jesus himself cried from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34, quoting Psalm 22:1).

The mystics dared to say this silence is not always absence. St John of the Cross called it the “dark night of the soul.” In that night, prayer feels empty, but God is nearer than ever, stripping away illusions and deepening love. Silence can feel like abandonment, yet it may be the place where God is holding us most closely.

So hear this: it is not a failure of faith to feel the weight of depression or to sit in silence where God feels far. You do not have to “fix yourself” before God will listen. You are allowed to come as you are, heavy, anxious, waiting in the quiet.

Not the End, Just the Beginning

This is not where the story resolves. It is just where it begins with honesty. Faith and mental health do not meet in quick fixes. They meet in ache. In saying the truth out loud.

If you are depressed, anxious, exhausted, or carrying grief, you are not less faithful. You are walking with Job in the ashes. With Elijah under the tree. With Jeremiah in the ruins. With Jesus in Gethsemane.

So take permission. You do not need to be a “better Christian” before you can come to God. You are already beloved. You are already enough.

Faith is not the absence of ache. Faith is bringing the ache to God, even when you are not sure God is listening.

God Who Walks in Twilight

Camaron G. W. SmithLeave a comment
Twilight scene with a person walking on a winding path under a colourful evening sky, symbolising God walking in the cool of the day.

At the Wind of the Day

The first time we hear of God walking, it is not in a blaze of glory.
Not in the brightness of noon when everything is sharp and defined.
It is in the cool of the evening, Genesis says.
The Hebrew calls it l’ruach hayom, “at the wind of the day.”

That soft shift when the heat is letting go and the air changes,
when light seems to slip away almost without you noticing.
It is the time when the work has been done
but no one has yet gone to bed,
when the shadows pull long lines across the ground
and you feel that strange mix of ending and beginning at the same time.

From the start, God is not a voice far off in the heavens.
He is there in the dust, walking.
Unhurried.
Not pressing toward a task.
Just present in that in-between space.

And that time of day keeps turning up in the story, as if God likes it.
Abraham meets Him near the oaks of Mamre when the sun is leaning away.
Israel’s first Passover happens “between the evenings,”
with lamb’s blood on doorframes while the light is thinning.
In the Temple, the daily rhythm gives that same hour a place of its own
the evening sacrifice,
the smell of bread and incense
rising into the dimming sky.

Jesus keeps to the pattern.
On the road to Emmaus,
He meets two people when the day is almost spent.
He walks with them,
talks with them,
and sits at their table,
and in the breaking of bread,
as the darkness edges in from the fields,
they know Him.

It feels like twilight has always been His hour,
the place where He can hold light and dark together in one moment.

Maybe that is why most of life with God seems to happen in the in-between.
We live in the “already and not yet” of His kingdom.
Evening-souled people,
learning the slow pace of faith,
breathing out hope that has learned how to wait,
lingering in love that does not rush away.
He still comes walking when the air cools
and the day takes its last breath.

Creation to New Creation

That first walk in Eden ended badly,
with hiding and shame where welcome should have been.
But the story does not stay there.
At the end of Scripture, in the New Jerusalem,
there is no night at all, and the gates are never closed.
It is as if the first invitation to walk with Him is restored and made permanent.

The story that began with God searching for His image bearers in the evening breeze
ends with Him living among them,
no lamp needed,
because the Lamb Himself is their light.

For now, we live in the long dusk between creation and new creation.
But when the wind shifts,
when shadows stretch out over the ground,
when the air feels like it is holding its breath before the dark,
I think of Him.
I think of how He has not stopped walking.
And I hold onto the hope
that one day this twilight will give way,
not to night,
but to a dawn that never ends.

The God Who Refuses to Behave: Wrestling with God at Peniel

scribblingtheologyLeave a comment

I’ve been told God is tidy. Predictable.

A polite guest who knocks at the door of my heart (Revelation 3:20)
and waits patiently until I invite Him in.

Calm. Respectable.
Never raising His voice.
Never moving a chair out of place
unless I have done something so bad He cannot ignore it.

But that is not the God I have met.

The God I know does not knock.

He storms in
like a summer squall,
blowing the screen door off its hinges.

I have felt Him in the sting of sudden tears while washing dishes.
In the silence after a friend spoke truth I did not want to hear.
In the way a bush can blaze in the middle of nowhere (Exodus 3:2).

He walks through locked rooms (John 20:19).
He meets you in the night for a wrestling with God
until you cannot tell if you are losing or being saved
just as Jacob did at Peniel (Genesis 32:24–30).

Some days I love Him for this.
Some days I do not.

Not the God of Neat Theology

I used to think faith was holding the right answers in a tight grip.

I could draw the Trinity’s diagram.
Recite the problem of evil like a manual.
God as a solved equation.

But He slipped through my grip.

Like wind through a cracked window
rattling the frame.

Job knew this.
He asked for reasons and got a whirlwind (Job 38–41).

Questions instead of answers.
Not cruelty, invitation.
Awe, not explanation.

The Bible’s God has edges.

Fire on Sinai (Exodus 19:18).
A whisper Elijah almost misses (1 Kings 19:12).
Splitting seas (Exodus 14:21–22).
Walking gardens at dusk (Genesis 3:8).

Same God.
No one pattern.
The same untameable God who shows up in ways we never expect.

The Unmanageable Presence

We put Him in systems.
Creeds.
Charts.

Doctrine matters.
But I have seen how beautiful cages still hold prisoners.

And the God inside always finds a way out.

Jeremiah sees almond blossoms in winter (Jeremiah 1:11–12).
Hosea marries the unfaithful (Hosea 3:1).
Mary gives birth in straw and animal breath (Luke 2:7).

None of it fits the script.

The mystics knew.

Meister Eckhart prayed, “God, rid me of God.”
Julian of Norwich called Him “our clothing”
close as skin
but also a love without edge or floor.

The Rebellion of Love

I have heard Him in creation groaning (Romans 8:22).
In the psalmist’s clenched fist:
“Awake, O Lord! Why do You sleep?” (Psalm 44:23).

I have seen Him in the eyes of the crucified
where my answers go to die (Mark 15:34).

I do not want the domesticated god anymore.

The god who never interrupts.
The god who never overturns.

The real God flips tables (John 2:15).
Strips my blankets.
Leaves me with Himself.

No roadmap.
No checklist.

Just a Presence.
Wild. Untameable.
Too beautiful to bear for long.

The Limp of Faith: Wrestling with God

Jacob left Peniel with a blessing and a limp.

The limp is holy.
The awkward walk of those who have been wrestling with God
and lived to tell of it.

I have learned to live with mine.
To let mystery sit where certainty used to.

God’s ways are higher (Isaiah 55:8–9).
Not just in glory
in strangeness too.

Let the theologians frown.
Let the pious keep their polite God.

I will take the One who wrestles me until dawn.
Who wounds to heal.
Who tears down my idols
and gives me Himself.

The Dangerous God Who Saves

He will not fit my doctrines.
But He will fit my wounds.

He splits seas.
Mends hearts.
Consumes like fire (Hebrews 12:29).
Hides me like a refuge (Psalm 32:7).

He will not behave.
And that is good news.

Because a God who will not behave
is a God who will cross every line to find me.

Even the line between life and death.

If that is dangerous theology
then give me more danger.

And if You will not behave

If You will not behave
neither will I.

I will not pray tidy prayers.
I will pray with fists.
With silence.
With the names I do not know how to use for You.

If You will not stay in the lines
take me with You.

Past the fences.
Past the rules.
Past the maps I drew to keep from getting lost.

Find me in the dark.
Wrestle me to the ground.

Bless me with the limp
that teaches me how to walk.

And I will call it love.