You have to begin with love

There is an old story about a gypsy man. A gypsy man goes into a village that has a little fountain in the middle of the square. And he’s drinking heartily from the water. And there’s a little boy watching him because, after he drinks, he keeps looking into the water and looking into the water and looking into the water as if somebody was down in the water that he was maybe talking to.
So the little boy runs over and he says, “Excuse me but who lives in the water?” And the gypsy man smiles at him and he says, “God lives in the water.” “Can I see him?” the little boy says. “Sure you can.” He picks up the little boy and puts him over the well so he can look deep down into the water.
And the boy looks deep down into the water for a time and he’s waiting and, finally, he says, “I don’t see anything. I only see myself in the water.” The gypsy man smiles and he says, “Yes, that’s where you’re going to find God, for he lives in you, yourself.”
It’s a kind of a lovely way of putting where we should be looking for the Trinity. We’re not supposed to be looking for Him outside, or in books of philosophy, or all these wondrous explanations or attempts to try to understand the mysteries of the world.
You’ve got to look into your own heart. You are made in the image and in the likeness of God. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Well, it doesn’t mean physically, but it does mean spiritually. It means that God has created you out of love in order that you might love Him in return. And it is indeed His love with which we love each other.
If you want to know who God is and what does He do and how He works, you must begin with love. Because as St John, the author of these gospels, himself says, “God is love.”
If you refuse to love, you will never know who He is. If you refuse to reach out in care for all His human beings around you, you will never know who He is. Because God has come and He hides Himself in our own hearts, and the name of that hidden place is God’s love.
So let us celebrate the Trinity, not as some obscure doctrine of two thousand years, but as the life that we must lead. It is the giving of ourselves, it is the forgiving of God that we share with each other. And this is what makes life with God eternal.
To be one with Him is to love each other and to experience the eternity of God’s life, one with the Father, one with the Son and filled with the Holy Spirit.