Photo was taken at Fota Wildlife Park, near Cobh, Co.Cork (Irl)
A little duckling enthusiastically gets ahead of Mum!
Thought on Thursday – June – 31/05/2018
‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God’s gift, that’s why we call it the present.’ ~Joan Rivers
Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday and reminds us that much about God and life is mystery. But what does this really mean? Thomas Aquinas probably answers it best when he said that whenever we speak about God there is only one thing we can be sure of, that we are wrong! Any attempt to speak about God can never be too far wrong though if we say that God is love. We have heard the saying that two is company but three is a crowd.
So where does this leave the Trinity? 3 as we know is a very significant number. Three is the first number to which the meaning “all” was given. It is The Triad, being the number of the whole as it contains the beginning, a middle and an end. The power of three is universal and from early days referred to heaven, earth, and waters. It is human as body, soul and spirit. Three is the number of time: past, present and future. It is about birth, life and death. It is about beginning, middle and end. Three is a sacred number in many religions.
Three is a number that occurs regularly in the Gospels: three wise men, Jesus tempted three times in the desert, Peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus fell three times on the road to Calvary, three days in the tomb and so on. While we may not fully be able to explain the mystery of the Trinity it is good to acknowledge that much of life is a mystery. Life can be unpredictable, uncertain and at times cruel. In the mystery of life we believe that God is somewhere in the middle, helping us to cope and adapt.
Somewhere in the middle of it all are three forces working together as one and hopefully making a difference to all our lives. There are many things in our world and in our lives that we do not understand. It is the bad and sad stories that so often grab the headlines. But God’s love will always be visible and wherever its presence or energy is, we have nothing to fear. We are not in isolation but part of a community built on love in all its forms. Trinity may be surrounded in mystery but there is no mystery about the difference God’s love makes in our world and lives.
