I loaded my blog home page earlier and had a pang of guilt over the gaps between blogs, which seem to have gotten bigger since we got to Cambodia. Last month, I had all my blogs planned out by the halfway point but then had difficulty getting them posted. Now that Internet is easily accessible, I no longer have a ton of things to say – which I imagine is partly the fault of said Internet.
But of course, right when I started feeling down about not updating, God gave me a blog to write.
We make an effort to have “team time” every day. Especially when we have a ministry schedule like this month’s, it’s great to have this dedicated portion of the day that we spend all together. Today, we lay in a circle, holding hands and praying…a wheel of prayer.
When I looked directly above, there was a ceiling fan directly in my line-of-sight. It had three blades and, with my mind focused on God, I immediately thought of the Trinity. Considered separately, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are like those three fan blades, in that they are three parts of the same thing.
But fans are not stagnant, and neither is God.
Turn it on, and the fan’s individual blades now blur together in a whir of constant movement. And when God is acting, He doesn’t act distinctly from the Holy Spirit. Jesus couldn’t act without His Father moving through Him. When we see the works of God, we cannot distinguish between the three parts of the Trinity. We just see the whole Trinity.
The next thing that popped into my head is a direct result of our team being named Iridescent. The idea of the fan blades spinning continued, but now they were throwing off sparks of multi-colored light.
Since getting Internet, I’ve been reading a few news and current event articles (and catching up on my celebrity gossip). For all the precious stories about babies, celebrations, and the kindness of strangers, there are as many or more tidbits about divorces, refugees, and hatred. It can seem like darkness is blanketing the world, not letting anything good persist.
But even the tiniest light shines brightly in the darkness.
I pictured the earth like it appears in photos of light pollution (kind of ironic, now that I think about it). The night sky over it seems pitch black, but then the pinpricks of light start to grow and converge. And the darkness doesn’t seem so dark anymore.
My prayer from all of this contemplation is simple: that the lights would never go out. That they would shine brightly, each with it’s own color, and spread far and wide. That hope, and peace, and faith, and goodness would be our focus, and that we would banish our fear, our insecurity, our dissension, our prejudice.
I’m sharing all of this with you because I hope that you find encouragement in this image of God, as I did. I hope you find a way to share your light this week. And I hope that you remember to take time to ponder the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
(That last one I say completely without any kind of judgment; God and I had a heart-to-heart on Saturday and yet, a few days later, I’m back to needing reminders to check in with Him. That’s what the blessing of community is for!)
