I’m a great believer in using different learning styles. What works for one person and helps them understand something, will not necessarily help someone else. Some people learn by Listening, some by reading, some by pictures, some by doing something physically – some learn best alone and some together with others.
This I think can help us as we think on the mystery that is the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is God experienced in three different ways: as the Father, maker and care of the world; as the Son, who came into the World to show us the way that God had intended us to live, to show us his love and bring us back to him; and the Holy Spirit, God’s power sent to his people when Jesus left the world.
Each and every part of these is God – but each are him experienced in different ways, they are different ways to know him and learn of him. If we struggle with the concept of father, we can know Jesus and be filled with the Spirit; if we find it difficult to understand the Spirit (and who doesn’t?!) we can know God who made the world, and be inspired by all that Jesus did and taught; if life stories or history aren’t our thing, then we can go with the theology of God and what the Spirit is doing in the world today. All these are ways we can encounter God and all he is doing in the world today. God is there in everything, whatever we are touching. He is available in all ways and all things.
Don’t let talk of the Trinity confuse you. It just means God is there for you – in whatever way you need him, in a way that best fits in with how you think.
God is so vast, we can never understand the full breadth, but thanks to the Trinity we can all know him in a way that makes sense to us.
A Santíssima Tridnade, Holy Trinity, Brazil
Thank you God
that there is so much of you,
that we can experience you
in so many different ways.
Thank you that you are never far from us
always there for us,
reaching out to us
in the way that we need.
