[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 13/June/2021]
At HBC we recently celebrated ‘Trinity Sunday’. This gave us an opportunity to think again not just about an obscure theological doctrine, but about the nature and character of the God we serve and worship. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God isn’t a thing or an object, but rather God is a Person, or – to be precise – God is a Community of Three Persons. God is a personality, not just an abstract concept; God is a community, rather than an individual. God, as Trinity, will always resist the attempts of theologians (i.e. people like me!) who might try to reduce God to human concepts and language.
To say that God is a Community of Three Persons means that God is personal in the sense of being loving, relational and capable of sharing in all our joys and successes as well as in our pain and failures – as God showed us in the most amazing way when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and when He rose again to bring us the hope of eternal life.
The doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t just tell us what God is like; it also tells us about what God does and how He acts in the world. Whenever God wants to build His Kingdom, He always seems to start by calling people to work together in community. When Jesus started His ministry, the first thing He did was to call a community of disciples to share the message of God’s love to the world. Likewise, when we come together out of a desire to serve Jesus, God gives us all a role to play in building up His Kingdom in our local communities, families and workplaces. This means that as a community at HBC, we’ve all been commissioned by Jesus to build up His church and to help the Kingdom of God come to Horley so that God’s will be done here in this little corner of East Surrey.
I hope this gives you some encouragement as you go about your daily tasks this week. I hope, too, that you’ll look for opportunities to share God’s love with your friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, etc. As you do this, I pray that we’ll start see more people being drawn into the community of grace that God (i.e. the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is building in Horley through the ministry of HBC!
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Contributed by Joshua T. Searle; © the Author
