Fresh Footprints - In Search Of A Lost GodНамуна

When we consider this big life, death, resurrection pattern of nature, of the Bible narrative and of our own selves, we begin to discover the fundamental rhythm of how the universe operates. It follows that God must be characterized by the same rhythm as the universe he created. This is the key to understanding what God can and what God can’t do, as well as what he will or won’t do.

The first followers of Jesus Christ faced a dilemma. Evidence and experience indicated that God possessed personality, he was truly alive, and had revealed himself as Father, as Son, as Holy Spirit. Until then you either believed in one God, as did the Jews, or you believed in many gods, as did everyone else. This raised questions. Was God three Gods? Evidently not. The Christians believed in one Creator and Sustainer of all things. But if he is not plural, how can Jesus be God, and how can the Holy Spirit be God? And which one do you pray to? Father, Son or Holy Spirit?

Central to the Christian story is the reality of God the Father revealing himself among us as Jesus, the Son of God, i.e. God’s revealed form. Further, when Jesus returned to heaven, God’s way of remaining in the world was by his Holy Spirit present in human lives. This was was normal Christian experience from the very beginning.

The questions resolved by around AD 350 with the use of two words. The first is the word Trinity. This unique usage explained that God is one essential Being who consists of three Persons, or realities, described as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The other word is perichoresis. This Greek word means a circle dance. God is a living relationship, a loving community, within his corporate self. He seeks to share that relationship with all creation and especially with us. The divine dance whirls and pulsates with eternal life, light and fire, a throbbing passion of love beyond our imagining. God is Love and this all-powerful dance of eternal love and life, the sinuous interweaving of the three aspects of God in a spiritual triple helix is the root of all reality. Let ourselves be embraced in the divine dance and our world will be transformed.