I’m not the only pebble on the beach. Sometimes I think I am: I see a situation or a person through my eyes, and consider what I see is the truth. I may be standing with someone or even a group of people who are looking at the same situation. What do they see? Do they have the same view and the same perspective as me? Do they bring the same history, the same thought processes and the same perceptions? No. So why and how can I possibly believe that what I think about a situation – or, even worse, a person – is the whole truth? Yet so often this is what I do. And we know what the book of Proverbs says about the man who is wise in his own eyes: “There is more hope for a fool than for him.” (Prov 26:12)

There is only one person who sees the whole truth, and that is the person who is the Truth. There are millions of pebbles on the beach – billions even. Each one of us is different, each one of us is unique, and each one of us sees through a different pair of eyes. Only God can see the real truth. One day we will “know as we are known,“ but until then what He wants us to do is to love one another, serve one another and submit to one another – and look to Him for the truth. If we succeed in this, and at least achieve some degree of unity in whatever little group we belong to – two or three gathered in his name – then we are in a position to look together to see the truth that the Truth reveals to us. If we are not in this place, we are forever in danger of arrogant opinions and warped imaginings that do not reveal the beauty of the Giver of Life.

I was recently discussing with someone how animals and birds “think.” We were considering the behaviour of different animals and birds and how complex their thought processes can be in their specialist areas, and also how alien they must be to our own. How much further beyond ours, then, are the thought processes of the One who says “my thoughts are not your thoughts?“

So how easy it is to think we know the truth, and how far our “truth“ can be from what is in the mind of Christ. Yet as Paul says, we actually have the mind of Christ. I think that we, His body, will be able to access more of  those thoughts that aren’t our thoughts that are flowing through our wonderful mind, when each of us remembers that we are not the only pebble on the beach.