Created in the Image of Our Triune God

The Trinity and the relational three character of creation is so fascinating! Patterns of three are all around us! If you look you will see "3s" everywhere! The illustration above is a "quark" which is the fundamental constituent of all matter in our cosmos. This points out that the very fundamentals in our universe reflect the Trinitarian nature of God. A quark is never found in isolation, it is found in relationship with two other quarks. A proton is made up of three quarks. The proton can be seen as a reflection of the Trinity, God's Divine triune self providing the building blocks of creation. Atoms are made up of a relational three: protons, neutrons, and electrons. And the recently discovered fractal geometric way of viewing the design of the universe uses the division of 3 to break down the fragmental makeup of matter. Three base pairs of amino acids in DNA make a codon which makes protein, an essential component of all biological life. How can it be denied? The Triune God permeates all of creation from the tiniest known parts to the grandest places.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Loving Parent, Sacrificial Role-model, Wise Comforter - there are so many ways to describe our God but they still don't quite grasp the magnificence and mystery of our Yahweh who is intimately interwoven in all of creation. With an emphasis on the relational character of God our early church leaders were inspired to comprehend part of God's majesty and workings with the concept of the Trinity, which became a doctrine of the Presbyterian church.

According to to the Reformed tradition, our God is a Triune God - One God in three persons. The Nicene Creed was the first to define the Trinity in our confessions. Saint Augustine, one of the greatest thinkers of the early church, described the Trinity as comparable to the three parts of an individual human being: mind, spirit, and will. They are three distinct aspects, yet they are inseparable and together constitute one unified being. Looking at the whole cosmos through the lens of the Trinity, we see many patterns of three. Land, sea, and air. The earth's biosphere is made of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The rhythm of our days are trinitarian in nature: morning, noon, and night. Our Universe is made up of three intricately related parts: space, time, and matter. God has placed her stamp on the structure of the Universe. The trinity is illustrated in the connective relationship of time, space, and matter.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin identified the three aspects of our triune god as: Power, Word and Fire. In his, Mass on the World, he explained his scientific view of the Trinity: "In the beginning was Power, intelligent, loving, energizing. In the beginning was the Word, supremely capable of mastering and molding whatever might come into being in the world of matter. In the beginning there was not coldness and darkness, there was Fire." Ted Peters, in his book: God and the World's Future said, "God is personal only through one and another of three persons, not as a single ineffable entity. The net effect of the doctrine of the Trinity is to understand the divine reality as a unity of relation."

God's goal for us is to be in "unity of relation" as God demonstrates in God's loving relational self. 1st Corinthians 12: 26 reminds us, "When one part suffers, every part suffers and when one part is honored every part rejoices with it." We are all connected to one another from the quantum quark level to the space, time, and matter level. "So now faith hope, and love abide, these three. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Trinitarian prayer of the Cosmos
Our Triune God, You who are the Creator of all things, bring forth from us an awareness of our relational nature made in the image of your nature. Help us live in the Trinitarian pattern you intended for us, that connects us to one another as Jesus is with you and the Holy Spirit. May all your children of the cosmos know that we belong in relationship with you and in unity together. May our longings for Oneness bring peace, justice, love, and wholeness to the world. Amen

(Quark illustration from: http://www.aip.org/png/images/quark-spin-png.jpg)