Three in One

How can you explain the unexplainable?

Jesus said to the disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you." - John 16:12-15

Imagine that God wants to make himself known to you as a person, in human form.  It would probably be hard to expect that this person is truly God.  If God is a person, how can God be, well, God?

Now imagine that God wants you to experience him as the very air you breathe, the breath of life, the source of all being?  Can you accept that God is in you?  Is that God?

We like to think of God in a variety of ways, but that doesn't mean we are believing in multiple gods.  God is all these experiences of him.  That's the beauty of the complexity of God.

This is Trinity Sunday, when we stop to try to understand three distinct aspects of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But it could be our efforts to simplify God into three separate persons only adds layers of confusion to the concept of a single unified God.

Jesus tried to leave his disciples with a way to understand their relationship to God.

He told them they knew the Father because they knew Jesus, but even when Jesus leaves, they will continue to know the Father through the Spirit.  Nothing will change, except their perception of who God is.

Maybe that is easier for us to understand.  God is with us.  We don't need to know how because we know why.  God loves us as his own.  We are his and He will never leave us.

Now when we pray the Creed, we separate the persons, but in our hearts and our minds and our souls, God is one, as we are one with God.

For me, that is the heart of understanding.

More to come...