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God Speaks through Creation
While trying to meditate outside, Tony Campolo fell asleep and awoke to a blazing dawn of holiness in God's creation. (Shutterstock Image by Sun Ok)
Special to United Methodist Insight | Sept. 30, 2025
John Wesley taught his Methodist followers to enquire regularly about each other’s spiritual health. They were to ask one another, at least weekly in their class meetings, “How is it with your soul?”
The question makes an assumption that not everyone who frequents Christian worship is willing to make—that there is such an entity as a soul, that I am a soul and you are a soul, a spiritual being as well as a physical being.
The French theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “We are not human beings on a spiritual path, we are spiritual beings on a human path.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) was a French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, paleontologist, philosopher, mystic, and teacher.
In his book, Denial of Soul, M. Scott Peck defines soul as “…a God-created, God nurtured, unique, developable, immortal human spirit.” Peck declares a soul is a person’s “essential spirit” and because it is spirit it cannot be codified or measured. The soul is a mystery as the creator of souls is a mystery.
Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…”
Most of us don’t live as if we believe we are eternal souls. We live as if we are a body with a life span of seventy to a hundred years. We prepare carefully for retirement. We have pension plans, carefully selected investments, IRAs, mutual funds, stocks and bonds.
We have long, sober conversations about the best way to make ourselves secure in old age, to insure our present standard of living right up to the moment that the hearse comes. We laugh when we see the bumper sticker, “The One With The Most Toys Wins,” but it is not too far from the way we live.
Many of us who live in the western world have so many possessions that we cannot, or will not, allow ourselves to see beyond this world and what we have in it. There is so much more to see and know.
Anthony "Tony" Campolo Jr. (1935 – 2024) was an American sociologist and Baptist preacher. Campolo was a popular commentator on religious, political, and social issues.
In his book, Carpe Diem, Tony Campolo tells about a Franciscan monk he met at conference where he was to be the featured speaker. The monk was there to lead meditation and worship, some of which was to occur outside on the grassy hills and in the woods surrounding the conference center. Tony was trying get into the meditating but nothing was happening for him. So one day he took the monk aside and told him about his frustration. He received quite a surprising response.
His Franciscan friend told him he “…did not know how to experience nature as a sacrament.” He said when you are trying to meditate in a natural setting, “…listen to God. Ask God to speak to you through creation… Look closely at something long enough, and you will find that it begins to look back at you.
That night Tony went outside, found a place to meditate and followed the monk’s instructions. He fell fast asleep and awoke to a glorious sight:
“…everything around me was ablaze with God… I felt myself bombarded by the Holy Spirit. Holiness was coming from under and over and around everything… the glory of the Lord was burning in the bushes around me… I was already raptured and I was already tasting the world that is to come.”
John Sumwalt
The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles.”