The Perfect Home (October 19, 2012)

…Opening To…

You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home. (Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity)

…Listening In…

Yes, the sparrow too has found a home there; the swallow has found herself a nest where she can lay her young beside your altars, LORD of heavenly forces, my king, my God! Those who live in your house are truly happy; they praise you constantly. (Psalm 84:3-4; context)

…Filling Up…

Far from being some obscure, antiquated doctrine, the Trinity permeates existence today as it always has even before anything else existed. The Trinity loves itself into eternally perfect relationship, which makes forming loving relationships in our own lives the best way to glorify God. When we come together in our faith communities or our groups of friends, we participate in the life of the Trinity. When we share the body and blood of Christ, we participate in the life of the Trinity. When we go out into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit to love and serve and find God in those we meet, we participate in the life of the Trinity. Our families, our groups of friends, our faith communities are home – not a perfect home like the Trinity is unto itself – but a good home made by fallible humans doing our best to love one another.

At the end of the film Serenity, the captain of the small spacecraft finds River sitting in the copilot’s chair, while rain lashes the cockpit’s windows. “But [flyin’] ain’t all buttons and charts,” Malcom Reynolds tells River. “You know what the first rule of flyin’ is? …Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home.”

The majesty of the Trinity is that God is a perfect home unto God. And God invites us and everyone and all Creation into that home. What makes God a home for us? It’s love, in point of fact.

…Praying For…

Dear God, you are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Trinity of persons in a Unity of being: grant me the grace to live my life as the recipient of the kind of love that you have for yourself, that I may be sustained by it and bring it to all I meet. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.