Dear Friends,
I write this as we approach Trinity Sunday with a certain irony in mind. Pre lockdown we had planned to only have four or five morning services around the circuit, encouraging people to travel and to gather in a larger number than usual to experience quality worship. This was to get us all used to the fact that we are not in a position to maintain our worship practices as we have known them and that things need to change!
We are already experiencing change in all sorts of unexpected ways. There are only a few services around the circuit each week, some of which are streamed, others are available in other ways. Some are choosing to ‘travel‘ for worship all over the country. Others are finding a quiet place and time to brood over the scriptures, knowing that they are not alone as they do this.
I imagine that some experiences, like some of our traditional ways of worship, please more than others. We still might prefer a different tune or song, or feel the reading was not fully explained. What this indicates is that the people of God are willing and ready to engage in worship. We may never again be as passive as we have been, wanting to engage more. Also we may be happier with greater choices of when to worship and where.
A week after celebrating the Pentecost explosion of the Spirit, beginning a totally new chapter in the people of God and how we engage with the wider world, we now celebrate the mysterious reality of God in the Trinity.
A child once described the Trinity thus: “It begins with God; it has something to do with Jesus and it’s still going on somehow.” That’s a pretty good summary.
God, weaving a pattern of dynamic, graceful reality throughout time and space; focussed and rooted acutely in Jesus; continually coming to us by the untameable Spirit to lead us from where we are to where we have to be.
God as Trinity, before, during and after the pandemic.
Peace
Tim