A Dance Like No Other
I was filled with anticipation as I sat in a room with 40 other students at my first School of Spiritual Direction (SSD). I’d applied five weeks earlier on a bit of a whim, not knowing what I was getting myself into that week. Jesus walked me into His kingdom 14 years earlier and I had lived a fair amount of life with God. We’d enjoyed seasons of deep intimacy, seasons of confusion, seasons of elation, and seasons of apathy. As I sat under Larry Crabb’s tutelage that first morning of the SSD, I was disillusioned with God. I was under the illusion that I had been a faithful follower and He was not blessing me the way He should. I had done A and B and I couldn’t understand why God wasn’t doing C.
The religious formulas formed in me from my childhood still tracked through my mind. The formulas which prevented me from seeing Him clearly, which prevented me from experiencing His wild heart of love for me.
THE TRINITY DECONSTRUCTED
Then Larry began to teach. “At the center of the universe is a perfect community of love.” he said. “The Father is pouring His love into the Son for the sake of the Son. The Son—begotten of the Father, meaning of the same kind, not created—is pouring His love into the Father for the sake of the Father, and the Spirit—translated life-breath—is the embodiment of the love between the Father and Son. The Spirit, who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son indwells all who enter into their community of love through Jesus Christ. This is the Trinitarian dance of love.”
Lisa, Meet God.
My mind was blown. Not in the resistant, mind-boggling way it was blown when I was first introduced to the idea of the Trinity in college. Larry painted a compelling vision of the Trinitarian God which was invitational. I didn’t possess any vision for how the Father, Son, and Spirit worked together. As a result, I related to the Father, Son, and Spirit in a compartmentalized fashion. I had never imagined being in a dance of love with them. I had never known there was an invitation to a divine dance.
It gets better. Larry continued, “This Trinitarian God created us to be part of their perfect community of love. They made you to be caught up in their dance, pouring their love into you so that you could pour it back into them and into others, reflecting them on this earth. In Christ, you are at the center of the Trinity’s circle of love.”
AND SCRIPTURE BEGINS TO SHIMMER
Jesus’ prayer to His Father on behalf of his followers took on new meaning: “I am in them, and you are in me, may they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.” (John 17:23)
I felt a tectonic shift occurring in my soul as he spoke. I was captivated, drawn, and thirsty to be caught up in this Trinitarian dance of love.
It had been many years since I had replaced my Mormon vision of God, who I believed was on another planet married to Heavenly Mother and not at all involved with me, with the biblical vision of God. No wonder I was baffled with the Trinity when Christ-followers during my searching years equated God to an egg or water. I don’t blame them for I, too, could not have painted a compelling vision of the Trinity for so many years. On this day, everything about my life with God changed. Intimacy replaced demand. Longing replaced discontentment. Desire for more of God replaced hungers for second loves. And the shifts continue as their love draws me deeper into their heart.
I wonder what this vision of the Trinity and their invitation to you stirs in you.
At the center of the universe is intimacy, a deep, abiding, tender, affectionate belonging...Jesus tells us it is for that intimacy we were created and redeemed... All our longing is longing for this intimacy. All our hungers are finally hunger for this; all our thirsts are ultimately thirst for the passionate belongingness of God.—Experiencing the Trinity, Darrell Johnson