Tag: Jesus

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.

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.

Written in Heaven

scribblingtheologyLeave a comment

A biblical theology of suffering and hope

Suffering will find you

as it found Him.

But your name is written in heaven,

In light no shadow can touch.

In the beginning,

God breathed into dust

and called it good.

But even before the dust was firm beneath our feet,

a shadow waited.

The Serpent spoke,

and we listened.

The Garden shrank behind flaming swords,

and we stepped into the world

with thorns in our hands

and longing in our bones.

(Genesis 3)

Pain was not the beginning

but it was the consequence of forgetting

who we are.

Still, God did not turn away.

He clothed the shame.

He called the wanderers.

He wrestled with Jacob,

wept with Hannah,

answered Job not with reasons

but with a storm.

He carved covenant into stone,

carried the cries of Israel through wilderness,

and spoke comfort even in exile.

(Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Lamentations)

And when words would no longer suffice,

The Word became flesh (John 1).

Not safe flesh,

not unmarked flesh

but bruised, bloody, breakable.

He came not to explain suffering

but to inhabit it.

To be born under empire,

to labour in obscurity,

to sweat blood,

to carry a cross.

“He was a man of sorrows,

acquainted with grief.”

(Isaiah 53:3)

The God of the cosmos

entered the wound of the world

and made it His dwelling place.

The cross is not a detour.

It is the way.

“If anyone would follow me,” He says,

“Let them deny themselves,

take up their cross daily,

and follow.”

(Luke 9:23)

This is not cruelty.

It is an invitation.

To union. To dying. To resurrection.

To be baptised not only in water,

but into His death.

(Romans 6:3–5)

And yet

your name is written in heaven.

(Luke 10:20)

This is what He told them, not after comfort, but after conflict.

Not when they were safe, but when they were sent.

When they saw demons fall and darkness tremble,

He said:

“Do not rejoice in this…”

“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Because what matters

is not that you wield power,

but that you are known.

Held.

Remembered.

Inscribed in the eternal.

“See, I have engraved you

on the palms of my hands.”

(Isaiah 49:16)

The apostles knew.

They were beaten and blessed.

Scattered and sealed.

They rejoiced to suffer disgrace for the Name. (Acts 5:41)

Paul was no stranger to thorns

in the flesh, in the church, in his prayers.

And yet he wrote:

“We suffer with Him,

that we may also be glorified with Him.”

(Romans 8:17)

“These light and momentary afflictions

are preparing for us

an eternal weight of glory.”

(2 Corinthians 4:17)

Even creation groans, but not in despair,

in birth.

(Romans 8:22)

The Spirit does not take away the ache.

The Spirit groans with us.

Prays when we have no words.

Dwells in the dust with us

until all things are made new.

And they will be.

For He will come again.

Not as a suffering servant,

but as the One who wipes every tear.

(Revelation 21:4)

And He will not forget.

He will open the book, the Lamb’s book

and read the names

that the world has tried to erase.

The names written in heaven

before the foundations of the world.

(Revelation 13:8)

Yours among them.

Suffering is not the evidence that you are lost.

It is the path of the saints,

the shape of the cross,

the echo of Eden groaning toward glory.

And you,

even as you weep,

even when you are wounded—

are not forgotten.

Your name is written in heaven,

in light no shadow can touch.

And the One who knows it

still bears scars of His own.

Not Drenched, But Drawn: Rethinking Baptism in the Spirit

scribblingtheology1 Comment

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

—Romans 8:16

They told us to wait for the wind.

To pray until the fire fell.

To tarry until we were baptised again—

not in water, but in power.

And so we did.

We begged for signs.

For the sudden tongue,

the holy heat,

the trembling proof that God had come close.

But God had already come close.

The Language That Divides

The phrase “baptism in the Spirit” has become a boundary line—between the anointed and the merely saved, between the spiritually alive and the doctrinally dull. But Scripture speaks differently. It does not cast the Spirit as a second experience but as the seal of the first.

In 1 Corinthians 12:13, Paul writes:

“For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body.”

Not some. Not a chosen few. All. The Spirit is not a delayed second act. He is the very breath we inhale at new birth. The theology of “Spirit baptism” as a dramatic post-conversion event, often used to signal deeper intimacy or greater power, too easily fractures the body of Christ. It creates a hierarchy of holiness, a performance of spirituality, an upper room without a cross. But Pentecost was never a formula. It was the fulfilment of an ancient promise—God with us, within us, among us.

The Spirit as Union, Not Upgrade

Jesus breathes on His disciples in John 20 and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

No rushing wind.
No thunder.
Just breath.

No spectacle—only substance.
This is not emotional hype,
not a dopamine rush mistaken for doxology.
It is Genesis again: the Spirit hovering,
and then entering—God breathing into dust,
and dust waking to communion.

It is Ezekiel’s valley, bones strewn like broken hope,
and the Word, like a prophet’s cry, calling sinews and skin back to purpose—
but only breath makes them truly live.
Not machinery of religion. Not memory of tradition.
Only breathe.
Only Spirit.

This is no theatrical power (though it can sometimes happen, like in Acts 2).
No divine electricity waiting for a better switch.
The Spirit is not the upgrade to your faith.
He is its origin and its goal—
The bond that binds us into the Triune life.

To receive the Spirit is not to perform
but to participate.
To be drawn into the perichoresis—
that dance of Father, Son, and Spirit,
where love has no beginning and union knows no end.

The Spirit is not a badge you earn, not a second tier for the elite.

He is the down payment of our inheritance (Eph 1:13–14), the seal of our adoption (Rom 8:15), the whisper that dares call God Abba.

He is not the sensation of holiness,
But the substance of it.
Not proof of ecstasy,
but the presence of intimacy.

“He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.”
—1 Corinthians 6:17

This is the deepest baptism—
not of water, fire, or even tongues or trembling limbs.
But of union.
Of soul sealed to Spirit.
Of a humanity lifted into the life of God.

Participation in the Triune Life

To be filled with the Spirit is not to overflow with noise,

But to abide in silence, thick with love.

To be caught up in the life of the Trinity.

The early church spoke of theosis—

that we become by grace what Christ is by nature.

“That you may become partakers of the divine nature.”

—2 Peter 1:4

Not a Second Baptism—A First Love

We are not waiting for the Spirit.

We are awakening to Him.

Not tarrying for power,

But turning to Presence.

The language of “Spirit baptism” has too often led us to look for a moment,

a manifestation,

a miracle.

But the Spirit is not a showman.

He is the Spirit of adoption.

He teaches us to cry, “Abba.”

To know God not in performance.

But in participation.

Not in a fire that consumes

But in flame that communes.