Dear Friends
I am writing this on Trinity Sunday, the
Festival when we celebrate how God reveals himself to us as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. We sang a lot of hymns
which tried to explain how God is Three and God is One. But, as Adam found to his peril, if you think
you’ve got God sussed, you’re probably in trouble. God remains a holy mystery,
beyond our fathoming.
We had a beautiful reading this morning
describing how Wisdom was with God the Creator at the very beginning. This Wisdom figure is considered to be
Christ, the Son, the Word, calling creation into being with the Father. I love the joyful imagery of this passage,
and especially the words of Wisdom at the end of this passage:
‘… then I was beside [the Creator]
like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him
always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
Proverbs 8 (verses 1-4 and 22-31)
We are called to join this eternal dance
of the Trinity in our relationships with others and with God. We are the ones called to rejoice in this
inhabited world and to delight in one another, and in the whole human race. But our earth-bound lives are not always as
jolly, or as simple, as this text suggests.
Apart from being Trinity Sunday, today
also marks the start of Refugee Week (16-23 June). John and I have taken up the ‘my ration
challenge’ campaign and will be living on the day rations of a Syrian refugee
in a camp in Jordan. We hope to raise
some funds for Concern Worldwide (UK).
I’ve just had my Sunday lunch of boiled rice flavoured with a little
cumin. Hardly yummy. We have six more days to go on meagre rations
of rice, flour, lentils, beans, chickpeas, cooking oil and a tin of sardines
each!
These special campaigns are good in
raising awareness of situations that exist for the inhabited world and for our
human race. We are now one global family
and we have a social responsibility towards one another both near and far. Let us work and pray for ‘fairer shares’ of
the earth’s resources, so that we can all rejoice in our inhabited world and
delight in our shared humanity.
In this new church season of the
Trinity, may you know
the presence of the God, who dwells
within your days,
the mystery of the Christ, who drenches you in love,
the blessing of the Spirit, who
bears you into life anew. Amen.
Sharon