Psalm 8 recounts one of scripture’s most familiar contrasts. Two ideas cannot be separated: When human beings consider our place in the universe, we are nothing. Psalm 78:39 echoes the sentiment that human beings are “a wind that passes and comes not again.” And yet God makes us “a little lower than God” to “have dominion” over the animals that fill the seas, the earth, and the air. Our place in the whole scope of the universe is minuscule, yet we make a huge difference to everything that lives. Humans are the stewards of all God’s creation. And in so honoring humanity, God is glorified.

On Trinity Sunday, we are reminded not only how small we are in the scope of the universe but also how little knowledge we have of God. The early church experienced God as the Father in the prayer Jesus taught, as the Son who was the embodiment of God on earth, and as the Spirit who remained present in their lives. But later theologians explored further.

Augustine’s treatise “On the Trinity” particularly impressed me when I first read it forty years ago, and it remains with me to this day. As summarized by Eugene Webb of the University of Washington, Augustine’s Trinity is “lover, beloved, and love; the mind, the mind's knowledge of itself, and its love of itself; the eye of the mind, its expression as word, and the will that produces that expression; object, vision, and attention; memory, inner vision, and will; memory, understanding, and love.”* On Trinity Sunday, we contemplate the mysteries of life: of humanity, of earth, and of God.