For Lent, I am walking us through a book called Apprenticeship With Jesus. You can follow along by reading my
highlights and reflections. Extensive previews of the book, including excerpts, can be found through Google Booksand Amazon, as well as eBook purchasing options.
Day 5: Desiring to Dance With The Trinity: God as Joy in Motion
– At the center of the universe is a relationship…a loving community known as the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)
– This Trinitarian framework is a community of love
– Each member of the Trinity interacts with the other members with mutual love and delight
– God is not static but a life or a kind of drama – a dance
– We are called to enter the dance
– More than pious productivity, we are called to learn to dance with God and value loving relationships
– Within the dance you do not feel alone, lost, or confused
What Moon is trying to say with all of this talk of “the drama” and “the dance” is that the Trinity is the perfect example of proper community and relationship. In the Trinity we learn about submission, mutual respect, and unity. Moon wants the reader to understand that to fully become changed we must become immersed in this Trinitarian framework.
I find this hard to grasp and visualize in my own life. But, the robust and dynamic way of looking at the Trinity is profound and worthy of more attention from me. We hear few sermons or studies on the Trinity and when we do it is more to explain what each member of the Trinity does as opposed to how they work together in a community.
Apprentice Activity: Re-visioning The Trinity
– Find a quiet place and read Jesus prayer for his disciples (John 17). Then slowly re-read both John 17:3 and 17:20-23
– Jesus’ only description of eternal life is found in verse 3.
– Joy is a dominant theme that surrounds Jesus
– Find a mirror and say the following to yourself:
“I am an apprentice of Jesus Christ, and I can live the rest of my life “with God,” in interactive relationship, receiving help, advice from God, joining in the dance of the Trinity.”
In the reading from John 17, Jesus prays for the following: for his followers to be ‘kept in the name,’ to be one, to have ‘my joy fulfilled in them,’ to be kept from the evil one, to be sanctified in the truth, to be one just as ‘you and I are one’, and to see the glory ‘which you have given me’. What a list and to think that Jesus prays that for us, even now.
In this blog, I often stress taking smaller chunks of scripture and meditating over them rather than having marathon Bible reading sessions. I could spend weeks pouring over John 17 and meditating over its richness. I encourage you to read this passage over and over this week. It is not a one sitting reading. It will take a lifetime to understand Jesus’ deep love and care found in this prayer.
What is Jesus teaching me? I think becoming like Jesus is a difficult thing to do but it is not impossible. In fact, it is highly possible once I understand what all has already been done in my behalf to make it a possibility. Just rereading the prayer of Jesus and to think that he is voicing this prayer over and over for his people should give us the hope we need that we can change not because of what we are doing but because of what Jesus and the Holy Spirit are doing in us. We have unbelievable resources working on our behalf and at our disposal. We need to move into this reality and live beyond spiritual doubt, fatalism, and frustration. There is no room for these things in the Kingdom of God.
What has held you back from the confidence that you can become closer to God? Do you know what Christ has done for you to bring you the ‘with-God’ life?
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