Brooding over the Water

I am always astonished how the physical world can remind me of where we are in the church year. Maybe, it's me looking for the connection. Maybe, the preacher is always on the look out for an illustration. Whatever the cause, the connections seem to be there for me.

Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday, that day when we celebrate the wonder and mystery of God as three-in-one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit - the living family of God, all one and yet manifest in three clear and separate understandings and manifestations. Not a multiple personality disorder, but the reality of God experienced by humans- in the flesh and beyond the flesh, in time and beyond time. The creator of time, space, being and nothingness.

Whenever I ponder the mystery of the Trinity and creation, I am reminded of the many sunrises I have witnessed over water - over the ocean, mostly the dark, brooding, cold Atlantic. It always reminds me of Genesis 1 -"and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light.'" Every day, the brooding of God, breathing over creation and there is day and night- a separation between morning and evening. God's three persons, then, becomes for me a clear representation of the complex and multi-faceted way that God reaches out to each of us and to the whole of creation. God, dividing day from night, flesh from spirit, time from the infinite, also reconnects the relatedness of creation through three persons in one. At any given time we are unable to take God in completely, but God comes to us, completely, in parent, child, and spirit. We are the object of God's simplicity and complexity. We are the goal of God's three -so that we can be one with God.

May our brooding over the coming days, be connected with God's brooding over us - reaching out to us in three loving, complete persons who want for all creation to be connected and fulfilled together. May we find us all today, in relationship with God through whichever way we can receive God's love. The Triune God, reaching out to us, wants most of all to reconcile to God and to one another.