Unmoved Mover

I was struck by how convincing I sounded, even to myself. The others around the table moved with such certainty through this choir of faith that I envied their conviction. Formative years of Sunday school and church camps had left me fluent in a language I was no longer sure I spoke.

I once watched a woman cry. Real tears, the kind that come from somewhere deeper than sorrow. She was speaking to someone I could not see, with the familiarity of a child talking to a parent. I stood there, an unbeliever, but something in the air felt charged with significance.

Another time, at a friends funeral, I watched hundreds of people find comfort in rituals I no longer embrace. They spoke of heaven with the confidence of those describing a place they have visited. And although I could not share their certainty, I felt the power of their collective belief reshape the texture of grief itself.

About two months ago, something happened after drinks with friends at Nkirote’s: A local joint behind/adjacent Savory Supermarket. I had fallen into an easy sleep after the drinks but, around 3 AM, my heart started doing something I had never felt before. It was not racing, but slowing and each beat was growing fainter. My heart was giving in . It grew even weaker as I struggled get up.

The best I can explain the feeling is that it felt like I was slipping away into an emptiness I could neither fight nor understand. I stumbled to my feet, and Death became something physical in that moment. Its presence was so real. It was as if I could almost wrestle with it. My legs trembled beneath me as I gripped the wall, each heartbeat feeling like it might be the last.

In that darkness, all my intellectual armor fell away. I found myself whispering “Please” to whatever might be listening. “No! Not today. Not like this! HELL NOOO!!” It was not really a prayer but a primal reaching out into the void. I was grasping at air as if I could physically fight off the end.

As I slid down the edge of my bed waiting for ‘whatever’, I understood something about faith that years of skepticism failed to reveal: It is easy to be an atheist when your heart beats strongly. It is harder when you can feel it forgetting the dance.

Does God exist? A child’s question. Now, after watching the ripple effects of belief, I find myself wrestling with more complex uncertainties. If God exists, what kind of mind would choose to move the world this way? Through whispers and wounds. Through hopes spoken into empty air that somehow return as answered prayers?

Mama Shem once pulled me aside to explain her morning ritual. “You see,” she said, arranging packets of unga on her shelves, “I never open this shop without prayer. It’s not just habit . It’s protection. It’s blessing.” She insisted every success in her business came from this daily conversation with God. Last month, when her youngest son was diagnosed with malaria and she couldn’t afford the hospital bill, her church group rallied around her.

Within 3 days, they had raised enough for treatment, with some extra for groceries while she stayed at the hospital. “You see what I mean?” she told me later, with that same unwavering certainty. “God provides.” Was it God who moved people’s hearts to help, or just the power of community bound together by shared belief?

And in the end, does the difference matter?

The believers around me would say I’m overthinking it. “Just have faith,” they say, as if certainty were a switch you could flip. But I’ve seen too much to accept simple answers. I’ve watched atheists call out to God in moments of crisis, and devoted Christians curse the heavens in their grief. Faith, it seems, is less about belief and more about relationship – even if it’s with an absence.

My questions have evolved from “Are you there?” to “What kind of being would create this system ?” I find myself pausing each time to ponder this grand design. A god who moves the world through belief rather than direct action. Is this evidence of absence or the ultimate sign of presence?

In the end, what fascinates me is not the existence or non-existence of God, but the elegant machinery of faith itself. How belief becomes its own kind of truth. A truth that reshapes reality through the actions of the believers.

The paradox that keeps me awake at night is that in my unbelief, I have become more obsessed with the divine than I ever was as a believer. Try to see my point here. I think there is a certain devotion in doubt. There is a kind of worship in wondering. After all, what is more telling: the casual certainty of the faithful, or the consuming obsession of those who claim not to believe, yet cannot stop searching the shadows for signs of light?