it's complicated...

I apologize for my lack of recent posts. It's been a heck of a month--intense experiences at our General Conference gathering, a week of relaxation and reconnection back home in Nebraska and more. All that's from my perspective, though: in the meantime, you've been busy, too. Celebrating Pentecost, Confirmation, Mother's Day and the like. And, of course, dealing with the stuff of life: new births, illnesses, worries, hopes.

It's all quite complicated, the ways our lives get woven together with the movement and celebrations of the church year.

Which, I think, is partly what makes me so glad to be back with you all for Trinity Sunday this week. It reminds me about how complex and wondrously mysterious God is.

I confess that I tend to pray and talk more about God by picking one aspect of God's three-fold nature that I find most useful at any given moment. God our Creator when I need reminder of just how amazingly big God is and how infinitely powerful to give us new possibilities in every moment. Jesus Christ, who redeems us all, when I seek reminders of God's solidarity with us, even in all our weaknesses, pain and failures. Or when I need to remember what God's love can look like in human form, how it compells me to live like Jesus did. (Or try to, anyhow.) And then, sometimes I just treasure reminders of God as Holy Spirit--blowing new perspectives, breathing new life, emboldening with new fire. Uniting me together with all creation, calling me to a new identity.

Good stuff.

The trick is to hold all this together: all these ways of knowing and naming God are held in a unity that defies real comprehension. At best, we just get to know God in the unending dance between these ways of naming and knowing.

And, really, the point is not to figure God out. It's to find a new way of living, in partnership with God. In on the dance, ourselves.

Which is why I think it's also pretty cool that this Sunday is designated "Peace with Justice Sunday" in United Methodism. A reminder that we're called to live differently in a complicated world, as a response to our being loved by a complex God.

So, will you come give it a try with us?

See you Sunday!