The Enigma of the Trinity

Jesus said to the disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

John 16. 12 - 15

Jesus warned us that this concept of three in one was more than we could bear or understand. One God - three persons. God our Creator, God our Redeemer, God our Sustainer...God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Can you wrap your head around it?

From the beginning of Scripture we hear reference to the plurality of the Godhead..."Let us make man in our image," God says in Genesis. The Spirit hovers over the waters and the Word (Jesus) is the agent of Creation. I dare say that's another example of things we cannot bear now.

But the inimitable Frederick Buechner, whose humble approach to writing inevitably nails the truth, describes the Trinity this way:

If the idea of God as both Three and One seems far-fetched and obfuscating, look in the mirror someday. 

There is (a) the interior life known only to yourself and those you choose to communicate it to (the Father). There is (b) the visible face which in some measure reflects that inner life (the Son). And there is (c) the invisible power you have in order to communicate that interior life in such a way that others do not merely know about it, but know it in the sense of its becoming part of who they are (the Holy Spirit). Yet what you are looking at in the mirror is clearly and indivisibly the one and only You. 

- Originally published in Wishful Thinking by Frederick Buechner

Just look in the mirror! The one and only you is made in the image of God! Easy as that. (right!)

Happy Trinity, my friends.