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Believing people have always struggled with their image of God. We celebrate today the mystery of the Trinity, but often that doctrine does little to help us visualize an image that we can relate to. God as Father, though the image Jesus uses, flows from a strictly patriarchal culture and is problematic for many today. The Holy Spirit imagined as tongues of fire or as a dove doesn’t help much. Aside from the image of the Christ, there isn’t a whole lot we can get our heads around when it comes to imaging God. All of this may seem silly to a theologian, but a very basic need for ordinary people of faith is to have an image that allows them to be able to visualize their personal relationship with God.To this end, today’s Scriptures attempt to help us. In the passage proclaimed from the Book of Exodus, Moses invites God: “do come along in our company,” even as he acknowledges the reality of this “stiff-necked people.” The experience of the pillar of fire at night and the cloud during the day reinforces the Jewish belief in the immanent presence of the divine on their journey. God was present wherever the people went, even when they were less than faithful.In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes the presence of God in our midst not just a promise but also a challenge when he writes “live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.” The definitive sacrament of God’s love, John tells us, in his Gospel is the Incarnation. How more present can God be than by becoming one of us? This evangelist begins his Gospel with “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” literally “pitched his tent among us”! The most powerful images we have of God are the ones that image relationship.One of my favorite images of God is found in a poem written in 1890 by British poet Francis Thompson. Titled The Hound of Heaven, Thompson images God as a hound who relentlessly pursues the fleeing soul. In all of the crises of life, we search for meaning, we yearn for comfort, we seek rescue. One would think that in times of trouble we would welcome the persistence of such a loving God who wants to be so very present to us. But the poet brilliantly understands that, like the Israelites in the desert, we are often faithless and fearful at the thought of being hounded by such a God. Faithless, because we find it hard to accept that in our brokenness, God would stoop to help us. Fearful, because we know that his rescue will forever change us.Let’s face it, being infinitely loved is something we find hard to believe. Our human experience, though marked by periods of profound love, makes it clear that those expressions of love are finite. We know too well through our own feeble attempts that our love often falls short. Since we cannot personally experience total, unconditional love, we begin to doubt that it even exists. And even if it were attainable, it’s a degree of love we would find almost unbearable. In our brokenness, we know that we not only don’t deserve such love, we would never be capable of returning it. But that’s just the point of God’s love: it’s meant to be undeserved and incapable of being returned in kind. All we can do is accept it and share it.The poet also understands our fear of that love. Once that love is embraced, it changes us forever. Whatever preoccupies us with anxiety, tension or fear, will disappear and we would be totally absorbed in the presence of the divine. This would mean letting go! It would mean no longer being in control. It would mean being totally at peace. Somehow we don’t seem wired for that kind of transformation. We would rather flee the Hound’s “unperturbed pace” than let go of the very elements in our lives that cause the tension and anxiety, not realizing “Is my gloom, after all, / Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly."Imaging God in the way Thompson portrays him did wonders for me at a time in my life I willingly admit was faithless and fearful. What got my life back on track was neither the image of a loving Father nor one of inspiring tongues of fire, but rather the image of a Hound whose relentless pursuit was itself enough to restore my faith and banish the fear. This Trinity Sunday invites us to reflect on the mystery of our concept of God. It’s very useful to go beyond the traditional images, especially if that exercise makes us more deeply aware of God’s loving presence in our lives.