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.
Of course, this doesn’t mean with God as our center and our focus that we will never be rejected or hurt. But, to continue the illustration of the dance, if one person leaves a circle of two or three, the dance is hard to continue. But if we already dance with the Trinity, and simply add another relationship to that dance, the dance goes on even if one person steps away.
I think when we are hurt by another, we must always bring this hurt to God and let Him speak truth about it. When one of my kids gets hurt, they come to me and show me the scrape or bruise and get a hug or a pat on the back. I don’t have the ability to heal the wound right away, so they don’t come for relief necessarily. But I do tenderly care for them in their pain, and that seems to help. I can’t do that, though, if they don’t come to me with it.
Jesus definitely understood betrayal and rejection while He walked the earth. In John 13, Jesus is deeply moved as He tells the disciples that one of them is going to betray Him. He does not act as though, even when this was prophesied previously, that it was ok and didn’t hurt Him. Jesus understands pain, emotion, betrayal. He kept moving through it, though, because He wanted us to come back to the dance. He would not spare Himself hurt in order to accomplish this.
Whatever pain and woundedness you are carrying from people, will you come like a child to God and show Him? The hurt may not go away immediately, but we can find tender compassion when we bring it to Him. He will also help us refocus, so that we can continue to enjoy the dance of relationship with Him.
The dance goes on, and it is such a privilege to be invited into the beauty of relationship within the Trinity. I don’t want to be distracted from this joy by the brokenness of human relationship. It will hurt sometimes, but I want to keep inviting others into relationship as I maintain my dance with God. He knows how it feels to have people reject relationship with Him, but He continues to pursue them anyway. When I focus on relationship with Him first, and giving unselfishly to others second, I am moving in the power of the very foundation of relationship. The Trinity offers love and pours it out to each other and to us. As we recognize our position in the dance, we can do the same.
Our offerings to others, then, are not based on whether they deserve it or if they have been unselfish to us. But rather, the source for our loves for others flows from our Source for everything—the very Life of Jesus within. He is the Lifeblood of the Vine, and we allow that to fill us up and overflow to those around us. We are not dried up, then, as we are not trying to manufacture anything out of our own source. We have constant access to overflowing love. And we get to continue on in the dance.
For he is the complete fullness of deity living in human form. And our own completeness is now found in him. We are completely filled with God as Christ’s fullness overflows within us. He is the Head of every kingdom and authority in the universe! Colossians 2:9-10