One, Two, Three in a Row (or Trinitarian reflections...)

I've been musing on the trinitarian aspect of all of life this week. My latest bad habit is Bejeweled on the iPhone, a silly game of trying to get three colored jewels in a row. I am unfortunately, quite sure I could waste an entire day on this pursuit. Thank goodness my battery wears out eventually. I don't even know that I am improving any skill with this, just whiling away time aimlessly listening to the kabooms and crashes of jewels exploding (my favorite part!). So I've been looking at 'threes' a lot.

And one of my learning/serving covenant items was to preach and preside over worship three weeks in a row. The idea here is that you will get a microcosm of the feel of having to preach and lead worship week in and week out. This past Sunday was my third and final week. We continued to talk about King David and play off the theme of dancing...this time thinking about how we must always let God lead in the dance of life. A bit tricky, given we have to give up control as well as learn to 'listen' in a different way. My two year old nephew was there, and he helped with the Children's Sermon, and we even danced a bit again at the end of worship. It was a good day.

But a wonderful thing happened this third week of being the pastor. There is always this awe and amazement after a service that swirls around where God really took you as a congregation and what message the Holy Spirit really put into your heart to preach. My Catholic upbringing teaches that a homily or a sermon, is an act of the Holy Spirit. It is fed and led by the desires and nuances of God. I have found this to be more than the truth, provided I get out of the way (always a trick). But in the past I have still worried, still stewed during the time leading up to Sunday. I knew in my head that God would weave it all together the way it was meant to be, but living that in my heart was a bit different. But this past week, this third week, I stood all week, from Monday on, in the confidence that this was God's service, and where God wanted me to focus would come when it was supposed to come. I was so relaxed all week you would have thought I was on a cruise! And the inspiration came, some of it in the shower Sunday morning, but it came, and I was ready when it did. And once again I marveled at the Spirit's ability to use me in this way.

Three jewels, three sermons, three persons in one God. Just so hard to grasp that trinity idea. Maybe that is the point; its not an idea, it is a mystery. And we do not grasp mystery. We never understand mystery. We accept mystery. We yearn for it, and we certainly live in it, whether we want to acknowledge that or not. But it is not ours to understand. And yet, I find that so much of life seems to mirror this 'three-ness' of God. So much so, that I am more inclined to just accept that there is something profound, something holy about this, rather than grapple with it.

I have three churches that have formed and shaped me as an adult. I have three pastors that have been great teachers and influencers in my ministry. My personal adult history seems divided into three segments, and my childhood history has three segments as well. I love the photo on this site. We took this photo at a ruin in Dysert Odai in Ireland. The three soaring windows just grabbed my heart, seeming to point to something so much bigger, so much grander than I could ever imagine. Something like the Trinity?

That we are created in God's image is often compared to the Trinity. Three persons living in communion, love, mutual respect and admiration . . .living in relationship. As God's image, we are created to live in relationship with each other. We are created to live in mutual respect with each other. We are created to live in love with each other. What a beautiful gift to be created with such desires. Now, help us all to live in those desires.