Do you believe in one God or three Gods?
     St Augustine of Hippo took nearly thirty years of his matured life to write fifteen volumes called “About the Trinity” and was constantly updating and revising his work.
     If it took Augustine 15 volumes—I will not be presumptuous enough to do anything else than scratch the surface of the Trinity.
     St. Augustine—so the story goes—was struggling to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. So he decided to go for a walk on the beach, where he saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell. The boy then ran off to the ocean, filling the shell, and rushed back to pour it into the hole he had made.
     “What are you doing, my little man,” St. Augustine asked.
     “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole”, the boy replied.
     Augustine suddenly realized that this was precisely was he was trying to do…to fit the great mysteries of God into his mind.
     But I do think we need to have some understanding of the nature of the Trinity.
     Let me try and explain what I understand by the “Three in One” God—the Holy Trinity by way of an analogy.
If I take an egg, I have three parts to it:

• The Shell – would you call that an egg
• The Albumin – the White – would you call that egg
• The Yolk – would you call that egg?

Actually the egg is made up of all three parts—the shell, the albumin and the yolk.
The egg is incomplete without one of these elements—yet you would call all of them egg!
    So it is with the Trinity. The Godhead is one—just as the egg is one—yet made up of three persons the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Just as the egg is made up of the Shell, the Albumin and the Yolk.
     Yes, Christians do believe in One God, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.
     If I was to separate the shell from the white and the white from the yolk of the egg—the egg wouldn’t now become three eggs, would it? It would still be one egg!
     In the same way, there is still only One GOD when we perceive or recognize the three persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
     The Bible never mentions the word, trinity. However, there are plenty of references to the Holy Trinity.
Here are just a couple:

• “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21 and 22)
• “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:25-26)

     Unlike the egg analogy, there are times when we cannot distinguish the various persons of the Holy Trinity.
     Jesus himself said “...Anyone who has seen me (Jesus) has seen the Father...Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…” (John 14:9,11)

See Ya At The Gathering Place!  Bruce
 

Ramblings. . .
A man is flying in a hot-air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man below. He lowers the balloon farther and shouts, “Excuse me! Can you tell me where I am?”
The man below says: “Yes, you're in a hot-air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”
“You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist.
“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone.”
The man below says, “You must be in management.”
“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”
“Well,” says the man, “you don't know where you are or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault.”

I thought this was a pretty cute anecdote.  We all need to check our bearings from time to time but be careful who your “sounding board” is because they might just tell you something that is useless or castes blame toward an innocent person.

Blind spots—we all have them. It's part of living our lives. There are simply some parts of us that we can't clearly see, and there are some aspects of ourselves that are completely invisible. We can only see them with someone else's help or by expanding our own vision. It's a powerful thing, especially when we've been taught to only see within such narrow confines. The stories of how we're supposed to be and act sexually, physically, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, and so forth become tiny tunnels with narrow focuses. It's hard to see much of anything.

We can often see our faults more clearly in other people, yet we usually fail to apply them to ourselves. Because our reaction is so often to criticize negatively, we usually do not see that we are guilty of the same things. If we find a certain type of behavior especially irritating in others, we may have the same problem!

To illustrate this blindness to our own sins, recall David's sin, recorded for all the world to see in 2 Samuel 12:1-5, when God sent Nathan to show David his sin with Bathsheba. Nathan told of a case in which a rich man who owned many sheep had stolen a poor man's pet lamb and killed it to eat for dinner. King David was outraged that anyone would be so greedy and selfish, so he pronounced the death penalty on this man. Then Nathan quietly pointed out that David had done the exact same thing when he stole Uriah's wife and sent Uriah to his death.  David was a man who, when he recognized his sin, would deeply repent.

What angers us about others? Consider this carefully, since in the answer may be a clue to our secret sins. “For you who judge practice the same things.”

See Ya At The Gathering Place! Bruce