For those of you who are Christian, I want to emphasize this: your family is a vital and important area of ministry. For Trinity, the abandonment I experienced and then passed on to her mother brought nothing but goodness into her life. He tell us this in John 5 that the Father and the Son do the same, identical work: “Jesus responded to them, ‘My Father is still working, and I am working also’” (5:17). No one ever tried to pass these analogies off as actually like the Trinity (which is good, because they aren’t really like the Trinity). We believe in a gracious and loving God who is revealed to us as ONE God that exists as THREE distinct PERSONS – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The scriptures teach us to see God as eternally existing as Father, and it teaches us that God is love (1 John 4:8). While the Old Testament sometimes indicate a father-children relationship between God and the Israelites (Psalm 103:13; Isaiah 63:16-17; 64:8-9), Jesus taught his fatherhood in a unique way. You could be a Sunday school teacher (for any age) being asked to further explain, or reclining at a family meal where the conversation of religion comes up. I think the Trinity is all about God’s infinite ability to meet us – each of us, all the time – exactly where we are, with divine understanding that we aren’t always in the same place.As a child, Brendon McGuire was taken to Old Trafford by his mother, as his colourful, hard-drinking father had no interest in football. They have 2 married children and 6 wonderful grandchildren--Kami, Kourtney, Katie, Mallory, Grayson, and Avery. I knew it was important, but I still didn’t comprehend how the Trinity centers everything we believe as Christians. The Eucharistic gift assumes even more awesome proportions when we reflect that the Son of God present herein is ever united, intimately and indivisibly, with his co-Persons in the Trinity—his Eternal Father and their mutual Spirit of Love; which means that they, too, are mysteriously yet really with him, and consequently with us no less. The Holy Trinity is truly an ineffable mystery, however, we are blessed to encounter God in various relational ways.

From the first verses of the story of beginnings in the book of Genesis—“In the beginning God,” to Moses seeing the flaming bush and fire-seared mountains of the covenant, to the clear confession: “Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one” (Deuternomoy 6:4). And I would encourage all of you to ask that kind of question for everything you read in Scripture so as to better understand the heart of God. On one side is the heresy of Sabellius, who taught that God is one in nature and in person, that the Father and the Son are the same person in different manifestations at different times. No wonder the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole being (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:36-40).All of us are part of a family and perhaps some of you who are younger want to start a family one day. Because Lawonna had experienced abandonment and knew what it felt like, “she was extra cautious” about being intentional to make sure Trinity didn’t feel the same. A tree by nature roots itself into the soil, grows a thick section in the middle (a trunk), and smaller branches from that trunk. Lauren Amber Nielsen is an accomplished actor, model, and opera singer who has performed in over 35 musicals. If you received a measure of Christian education while growing up, you would have learnt about the unique view of God held by Christians.

A single person god cannot essentially be a father, neither can his very nature be love as the Bible teaches.No wonder then that so many children who grow up in the church stop going when they grow up and leave their parents: the faith that they have seen embodied in their family is one of confusion and mixed messages. Or perhaps you’re alone studying your Bible and wondering how God can possibly be three Persons and one God.