I was probably about twelve when I was in my church confirmation class, and I remember asking my pastor about the Trinity. I couldn't get how one and one and one, can be One, and not three, and I definitely couldn't get why it was important to say that God is three and God is One, if it was something that by definition was a mystery, something we can't understand.

The answer I remember well. I was told that the Trinity is like H20 – it can be ice or water or steam, but it's all water. Well, that makes sense – there's no contradictions there! The illustration of water, steam, and ice brought some clarity of this to me. It's so simple. The only difference between them is the amount of energy each molecule of H20 has. Otherwise, they're the same. God is just like that.

Ice isn't steam and no one wants steamed soft drinks. When you ask for a coke with your burger they don't put a cup under the cappuccino machine and hit it with a few seconds of really hot steam. Here's your cup of steamed coke.

And when we want ice, nothing else will do.

And when you're ironing clothes or cleaning the carpets, you need steam. Just plain water causes problems.

But in the shower, I don't want steam and I certainly don't want ice. Something in-between is what I'm looking for.

Steam isn't ice isn't water. But all three are states of exactly the same molecules. That's only an analogy of what the God we worship really looks like. But like many, I still sometimes have a hard time understanding it, much less explaining it.