It’s like an egg.

That’s how it was explained to me as a kid.

The Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Three separate entities of the same unit.  Like an egg’s shell, yolk and white, every part is essential to the whole.  Each with unique characteristics.  All working together.

I was reading John 14 this morning.  Jesus is talking to His disciples about what will happen when He returns to heaven (after His death and resurrection). In verses 16-21, Jesus is telling them of the connection and interaction of the Trinity:

^“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.  Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

He was introducing them to the Holy Spirit, who would become their new friend when Jesus went back to take His place in Heaven.  They would experience another aspect of the fullness and beautiful complexity of their intimately personal God.

It’s interesting to me that back at the beginning of the book of John, it was JESUS who was being introduced. John 1:1, 18 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning….No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”  People who “knew” God were exposed to a part of the Trinity that they had never experienced before.

And going back even further, God introduced Himself to the world in Genesis chapter one: Genesis 1:1, 26 -In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…”  This is the first indication that God was in partnership with the rest of the Trinity.

We were first introduced to God the Father.

Then Jesus, the Son.

And finally, the Holy Spirit.

Like an egg…one layer exposing the next, so that we could experience God in His entirety.

It occurred to me that when Jesus said, “I am the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE” in John 14:6, He was again referencing the interactive teamwork of all three personalities.

He was the WAY.  – “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

The Holy Spirit was the TRUTH. – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocateto help you and be with you forever –  the Spirit of truth.” (John 14:16-17)

God the Father was the LIFE. – And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.  (Genesis 2:7)

They were all ONE.

The mystery of the egg.  Three components combined, connected, and uniquely different.

We can’t truly know one without knowing the others, without experiencing the whole.

And like an egg, we can either sit and look at it, acknowledge it’s there, or we can crack it open, taste it, take it in.  Let its flavor and nourishment fill us, strengthen us and give us what we need to live as we were meant.