selfishness

The Dance of Relationship

The Dance of Relationship

I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God recently. I was struck by what he wrote about the Trinity. He says:

The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us. Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him. Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them. Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love.

He continues on to say that we are happiest when we are dancing, or in relationship, with the Trinity of God, as we are created for this—to be an extension of this beautiful relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

When we are enjoying this relationship and focused on God, we can enjoy the dance, and also reach out to others to come join us. I think the trouble comes when we believe we have to start our own dance, with people surrounding us who will make us feel happy. We are created to be in relationship, but the foundation of that must be our relationship with God or we will be tossed around and disappointed. I think that’s why so often we get incredibly hurt and rejected by people—because we have put them in a place in our lives that only He can hold.