Pursuing a knowledge of God, and pursuing godliness

Today, on Trinity Sunday, I am reminded of how eagerly we can pursue a knowledge of God, how thirsty we are for a deeper understanding of God. But the pictures we draw of God often pursue the lines of our curiosity, not the lines of his gifts and his self-disclosure. I am as prone to curiosity as the next person. But if I were to try to draw God based on Scripture taken as God's self-revelation, I might get something more like this: 

Let me be the first to say: It's incomplete, and could also use some editing for more appropriate parallels. With that out of the way, here is what it's trying to convey: 

The general form is ripples going out from the center, and the center is God. The rippling outward indicates God's reach throughout creation and specifically to the creatures who are made in God's image. Streaming out from God, we see water representing God's actions to cleanse us and renew us, foremost of which is the work of Christ; and flames representing the Spirit's presence with us. 

The center, God as the origin of all things, contains three attributes that come up as key in Scripture. At the center is "holy," as Scripture repeatedly says "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." While it is God's attribute first, it is something that he means for us to share. At one side is "mercy," where Scripture tells us to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful (again, a key attribute that God means for us to share with him). On the other side is "wisdom," where Scripture tells us that the wisdom of God is communicated to us by the Spirit of God: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of the Lord (reverence), joy in his presence. Once again, this is an attribute God means for us to share. 

At the top are the well-known gifts of the Spirit: faith, hope, and love. At the bottom we see the fruits of the Spirit. 

The graphic has some significant shortcomings (beyond the amateur art): though it is already crowded enough, still "Jesus" and "the Holy Spirit" are not explicitly named anywhere. That is not a small shortcoming, and so I can consider this to be a not-quite-beta version of the drawing, since it requires reading the accompanying text to get to material that is so vital. 

For all that it lacks, there are many passages of Scripture that could be explained with reference to this visual, where the authors are saying: God is this way, he is transforming us to be like him. 

If on Trinity Sunday I find myself drawing three circles to describe the person and work of God, these  particular three circles show how God's character has ripple-effects in our lives. The traits I would most focus on today are the ones he wants to share with us. The work of the Word and Spirit are to bring exactly that fellowship -- and transformation -- into our lives. 

Thank you for your patience with this series, now concluded. Several of my other series over the years have been driving at the same point. Related series include On being like God, and Rethinking the Shape of the Trinity, of which the most closely-related post in the series is part 4, which originally appeared in the Trinity Blogging Summit in 2009.