Love Songs a day when Christians remind themselves that God is a mystery. If he were small enough to be understood, he would not be great enough to be worshipped.
It would be fatal to any doctrine of God that it contained nothing inscrutable, and the central mystery of Christianity is that God is triune: one being in three persons.
Whichever way we approach an explanation of that statement we are soon out of our depth, for we have no experience of such an existence.
To our way of thinking, three persons means three separate individuals. How can it be different for God?
A wise place to start on the quest to understanding the being of God is to assume that our minds are small and finite and there is no way he can be made to fit neatly into our words and concepts. We understand that God cannot be fully understood.
With the Apostle Paul we note the chasm that the Bible's revelation of God opens up and we join him in worship: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out! (Letter to the Romans 11:33.)
Hints of the Trinity are given in the Old Testament, but what is eye-catching in the New Testament record is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not something put forward to prove a theory. Just as we assume the earth is round and don't feel any compulsion to keep reminding people of it, the Trinity is subsumed into the warp and woof of early Christian teaching. The New Testament writers were apparently in comfortable possession of the truths that Christ is God and the Holy Spirit, too, is a distinct person within the godhead.
Yet they were all Jews, with a firm if not fanatical belief in one God, but now they worship Jesus and the Holy Spirit as well as God the Father, while at the same time warning their readers against idolatry!
Only one conclusion is possible: their belief in the Trinity is set firmly within the framework of their belief in one God. If Jesus the Son is Lord, he is the Lord of the Old Testament. If the Holy Spirit is Lord, he likewise is the Lord of the Old Testament.
The Son and the Spirit are not overnight additions to the number of gods; rather, they reveal a previously unknown fullness and depth in the being of the one God himself.
Each member of the godhead is therefore to be worshipped with exactly the same degree of reverence, love and devotion. Moreover, the Trinity is not a remote and obscure truth, but something that ought to affect our lives profoundly.
Most importantly, Christians are in a love relationship with God. Two lovers will question each other ("Tell me more about yourself"), and the same is true of our relationship with God.
The more we learn about him, the more enriched and happier we are. St John spells it out: "This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John's Gospel 17:3).
Then the fact that we are made in the image of the Trinity has huge implications for us. All human beings are of equal worth, for each bears the image of God. Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
We bear God's image whether we are Jews or Gentiles, successes or failures, employed or unwaged, living north of a border or south of it, flaunting a Mercedes or fighting a drug habit.
Wherever a human being is seen, there we see the image of God. Each of us is unique. God made us that way and he loves us that way. The self we have is the one he gave us.
This weekend we celebrate not only the mystery of the godhead, but the wonder of our own worth; for it is the Trinity, no less, which is the source of Christian salvation.
Paul, writing to his colleague Timothy, asserts this in speaking of "God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." He then goes on to quote from a trinitarian hymn already being sung by 50 AD in the churches at Ephesus: "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He [Christ] appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, and was taken up in glory." (1 Timothy 2: 3-4, 16.)
Hard indeed the heart of that believer who tomorrow is not lifted heavenward in wonder, love and praise!