The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

When God Looked Like a Snowman

Have you ever wondered what God looks like?

When I was a small child, I used to sometimes think about this.

But I don’t think children worry about all the heavy, complicated details adults use to explain God — they just let their imagination loose.

And my young and vivid imagination told me, God must surely look like … a snowman.

A very friendly one too. Made of fluffy white snow, and — for reasons I can’t quite explain —I thought  he would probably wear a very smart black scarf – I treasured that image.

It makes me smile now, because there was something sincere about it. I wasn’t trying to be funny, and don’t think I even told anyone of my theological breakthrough.

Because I was just trying to make sense of Someone I somehow felt was there. Someone kind and safe. Someone who could be recognised even by small children.

And that’s where our journey with God often begins: with imagination, with longing, with a sense of presence before we have the language for it.

Looking back on it, I see that even then, I was reaching for the mystery of God — a God who is real, but not easily described.

Teenage Years: Evolution, Fear, and the Discovery That God Is Love

Then, some years later, when I was a teenager, we started learning about evolution at school.

I remember being genuinely astonished — not by the science, but by the idea that some people thought this meant God didn’t exist.

It felt to me as though someone was trying to take away a Person I had always known.

I wrestled with that for quite a while.

I didn’t like the thought that God might not be there and didn’t have the language or the arguments to sort it all out.

But in the middle of that confusion, one thing stayed steady:

I still sensed a particular kind of love — a presence beyond me — and I trusted in it.

And that simple trust in God’s love has never really left me.

What I didn’t realise then — but can see more clearly now — is that God’s love has a shape.

Pentecost, the Great Commission and the Holy Trinity

Last week, as the Church celebrated Pentecost, we remembered the moment the Holy Spirit came down and worked within the disciples — moving them from simply knowing about God, to living the life he was calling them into.

But Pentecost was never just an event. It was — and still is — an invitation into the very life and purpose of God.

Which brings us to the Great Commission.

St Matthew tells us that the risen Christ met his disciples on a mountain. They worshipped him, yet they were still unsure — still holding wonder and doubt together.

On that day Jesus said to them, “Go… baptise them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

I spoke about my younger self discovering that God’s love has a shape. Here Jesus names that shape for us.

He wasn’t just giving his disciples a mandate to keep his work going; he was inviting them into a new way of being — a shared relationship, and a name to carry forward.

That name is the one Jesus himself gave us: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Today we understand this as:

The Father — the love that brings everything into being, steady and generous, the source of all life.

The Son — the love that steps into our world, taking on flesh in Jesus, showing God’s heart in compassion, courage, and self‑giving.

The Holy Spirit — the love that moves within us, breathing new life, guiding, stirring, and drawing us into God’s way.

One love. Three expressions. This is the life of God we call the Holy Trinity.

This was a moment of deep truth Jesus shared with his friends on that mountain — but it’s worth remembering that the Church didn’t begin with perfect understanding. It began with ordinary people, carrying a fragile, growing faith and doing their best to follow.

Maybe that’s why Jesus didn’t leave them with a lecture, but with a promise — one of the most astonishing promises he ever gave:

“I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

It’s the promise that the Trinity — the Three in One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is with us in every part of life.

Knowing God, Knowing Ourselves

As we reflect on the Trinity, perhaps we feel we ought to understand it better — to properly grasp how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit fit together.

I have sometimes approached this as though the mystery were a puzzle we should be able to solve.

But the truth is, if we’re honest, most of us don’t even fully understand ourselves.

We often surprise ourselves with our reactions, our fears, our courage, and our contradictions.

And if we struggle to know our own hearts — and the hearts of those closest to us — how could we ever possibly expect to neatly understand the complexities of who God is?

So perhaps the point is not to understand but — to trust in his goodness.

Perhaps the Trinity is not something to master but — a mystery to live within.

Not a problem to solve but — a relationship that holds us, shapes us, and sends us out.

Returning to the Child — And the Life We Lead Today

And so today, as we reflect on these matters , I find myself thinking again of that small child who imagined God as a snowman.

I think she was trying to make sense of a presence she had felt — but not understood.

And the teenager who wrestled with the theory of evolution — I think she was trying to protect something precious she had sensed was important, even if she couldn’t yet explain why.

But as an adult, even after three years at theological college and all the years since, I still don’t really know what God looks like.

Still don’t understand how evolution fits with being created in God’s image.

But the amazing thing is this: I now understand that I don’t need to know everything.

I understand that it’s OK to rest in my belief that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – The Holy Trinity.

So perhaps the invitation today is this:

To let go of the need to define God, or to set modern science against ancient scripture.

And to trust in the love that created us, the love that walks beside us each day, and the love that fills us with God’s own breath of life.

And perhaps that is enough — just to believe.

But if we cannot quite believe, then at least to hope.

To live in hope that what Jesus promised is true when he said:

“I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

And perhaps, in the end, that is all we ever truly need —

to live our lives with patient hope in that promise.