Trinity Plus One

Like my sisters here at Daily Fast Fuel, I have a hard time grasping the whole Three In One concept.  I also have trouble figuring what God, who is in perfect relationship with his own selves, would want with, you know, US.  “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4)

He (they?) could do it all alone, and He has, as we see throughout all of creation.  Man didn’t help create any of it.  But God did give Adam a way to share in creation by naming the animals and managing the earth.  He has been trying to partner with us ever since.

He prefers to work beside us, reside in us, Him doing His work and we doing ours, together.  It’s astonishing to me.  We get to be God’s house.  We get to show His love to the world, to be Him with skin.  More often than not we do a lousy, lousy job.  Those times make me wonder, “What on earth could He be thinking?  Surely if He did it Himself and didn’t rely on us it would be so much easier, much more effective, with far better results.” 

And yet He knows this.  He’s more concerned with loving and being loved than with efficacy or the bottom line.

The Trinity loves us.  He loves our neighbors.  He loves our enemies.  He died for us, them, and “those people.” 

God could send a flash of lightning and a thunderous, “I love you, my children!” but he chooses not to.  Of all of the ways He could show His love to the world He uses us--selfish, pathetic, prideful, arrogant, ineffective us.

That decision has very little to do with what He is thinking and everything to do with how deep, how wide, how long, and how high, is His love—for us and for the world.

Bottom line, it’s about becoming one as He is one.  Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  (John 17:23)