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One of my great joys as a parent is the way in which everything is a wonderful mystery for my kids.

Who has your nose? Mystery!

Where’s mom/dad/kid (peekaboo)? Mystery!

Why do you have to go to bed? Mystery!

While the 4.5 year old will ask a steady stream of “why’s” to try and figure things out, she usually reaches a point where the unknown becomes acceptable. She embraces the mystery and moves on.

So many parts of our lives of faith are surrounded by mystery. We worship a God who cannot be known in Their entirety, and as such we are constantly met with “it’s a mystery” as the answer to our questions.

This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday, the one day in the church year where we spotlight the mystery that is the Holy Trinity. As Christians we affirm a Triune God—a God who is Three-in-One.

God the Creator, Holy Parent, Father, Mother.

God the Redeemer, Only Begotten Son, Beloved Child.

God the Sustainer, Advocate, Permanent Indwelling, Spirit.

The mystery is the how. HOW is it that we can claim to be monotheistic—to believe in One God—when we also affirm the Trinity—Three persons of God?!?!? Many other religious traditions would argue we are not monotheistic if we teach about the Three persons of God. Three ≠ One.

In their children’s book What Is God Like?, Rachel Held Evans (dec. 2019) and Matthew Paul Turner (When I Pray for You) beautifully explore this question. They initially begin with the more common question—“who is God?”. Turning to scripture, they begin to tell the reader how our holy scriptures describe God.

God is like

  • An eagle (Isa 40:31)
  • A shepherd (Isa 40:11, Ps 23)
  • The wind (John 3:8)
  • A mother and a father (Isa 49:15, Ps 103:13)
  • A flame (Acts 2)
  • Dancers (Zeph 3)
  • A trustworthy protector and friend (John 14, John 15)

Evans and Turner go on to invite the children reading or hearing this story into the mystery of not knowing everything about God, but to instead trust that because we do know what God is like, we can know some things about God.

That God is kind, compassionate, always with us. That God always hopes, and never gives up. Everything that makes us feel safe and loved—that is what God is like.

This Holy Trinity Sunday, be like our children and embrace the mystery. We will never know all of who God is—not in this lifetime, anyway—but we can know quite a lot of what God is like.

Image Credit: "The Trinity" by Andrei Rublev, early 15th c. Russian Icon