Trust!
“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him will not be condemned”
Thank you for joining today as we enter this short time wherein we consider the mysteries of God and His action to save us. This includes the Mystery of the Trinity, of the Body and Blood of Jesus, and the power of God’s Word.
From this Sunday through June 18th each of these topics is put before us, not so we get some academic explanation of them, but so we can learn of God’s awesome love, His desire for us, His self-revelation, and finally His desire that we trust and love Him in return.
Consider trust. How is it that children trust their parents? Where does that trust come from?
Scientists evaluating trust relationships like those of a parent and child (and similarly that of husbands and wives) looked to two sources that helped in establishing trust.
One source is the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is responsible for bonding. It is released during breastfeeding and during close contact. When a newborn is first held by a parent, that hormone in their systems is present creating a bond.
The other source important in building trust is the fact that children are naturally inclined to believe what they are told. This natural behavior is designed to save the child’s brain from constantly evaluating everything they hear.
We also know that trust can be easily eroded and eventually lost if a child is repeatedly lied to, is subjected to traumas, is not listened to, if promises are repeatedly broken, is disrespected, and fails to see examples of trust lived by the adults around them.
Trust and mystery are complementary. Indeed, our God is unfathomable. He is beyond our understanding. If we were to reflect on just one aspect of His reality, pure love for instance, we could spend our whole lives focused on it.
Consider our gospel today- God gave His only Son to save us, to pay our sin debt, with a love so perfect it sacrifices everything for us. It is a love so perfect that it exists even where unrequited or outright rejected. It exists even amid oppositional hatred.
God loves us so much that He revealed Himself to us. We get to know God and His way of life, His being, His Triune existence through His Son because in the end God wants us to know Him and be like Him.
Bottom line, God does not ask us to know Him in some technical fashion – how can there be three persons, One God? but rather by trusting in His realty of love. If we know Jesus and the way He loved both the Father and Holy Spirit have been revealed to us for it is one perfect love. So let us know Jesus better and in knowing Him live His way of loving.