Summary: In a magazine article recently, a forest ranger in Wales described the most common question that visitors to his park ask the forest rangers. Many people, he said, come to the park to hike one of the beautiful trails that wander through the forest, trails designed to display the magnificent trees and plants, to let the hikers encounter the array of wildlife in the forest, and to take hikers on to hilltops for breathtaking views of the countryside. But the most frequent question that visitors ask the forest rangers is not "Where does this trail go?" or "How long does it take to hike it?" or "Do we need bug spray on the trail" but instead "Excuse me, can you tell me where the trail starts?"[1] It makes sense. No matter how lovely or breathtaking a trail may be, if you don't know where the trail starts, you can't hike it. I thought about that question as I wondered about what to say today, because today is Trinity Sunday, a day on the church's calendar when we lift up the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity and proclaim not only that God is one God, God alone...but also that God is in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, quite understandably, many people consider the idea of the Trinity to be rather abstract and remote, something that theologians and philosophers might worry about but that is of little concern to us regular folk in how we live our everyday lives. But that's not true. The doctrine of the Trinity is actually like a trail in a deep and mysterious forest called the life of God. If we will walk this trail called Trinity, we will see and experience amazing things; we will discover something of what God is truly like, in all of God's beauty and wildness and splendor.
