My great grandfather Walter Seelheim was Jewish, while my great grandmother Augusta was a member of the German Protestant Church. Neither Walter nor Augusta was actively engaged in their respective faith communities. As a result, my mother’s family largely decided to go with agnosticism. In my teenage years, however, I broke away from our family tradition to find out for myself who God is.

When I originally set out to seek God, I only looked for One – not Three in One. I found “one God in three Divine persons” to be very confusing for me. And yet, God has compelled me to dig deeper and deeper. This is the beauty of faith: it grows and so does our understanding of God. I eventually came to appreciate the Trinity as an essential part of who God is.

We call Jesus the Son of God, which is an excellent way to describe the close-knit relationship the Trinity has. We call God the Holy Spirit, and we read in the book of Genesis how God’s life-giving Spirit turned our planet blue and green. We call God the Father; and I believe we all can relate to fatherhood one way or another so we can see Him as the Father of Creation if we believe in a created universe.

However, God’s invisibility poses a challenge for many. Jesus solved this problem. Growing up in the Middle East in the town of Nazareth and touring Israel later in life, the Son of God was very visible and publically accessible. He walked in our shoes; and I believe this is why His teachings still resonate with us today.

We are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit for three very good reasons: Through Jesus we are adopted into His family; the Spirit of God guides us all the way to heaven; and our Father in Heaven welcomes us into His everlasting arms.

It takes a Triune God to make things right for us.