To say that the sheriff was very impressed was an understatement. He knew the Indians were skilled trackers but this was something else. He said, “It's amazing you can tell all that just by listening to the earth.” The Indian replied, “No. They ran over me thirty minutes ago. Go get ‘em!”
Last month I mentioned about making wrong assumption and the media always seeming to want to put their own spin on a story rather than being concerned with accuracy. Over the last couple of years I have been quoted several times and only on one occasion can I say that what was reported was more or less what I had said.
But it’s not just the press. We all often see and interpret situations through the filter of our own preferences, prejudices and experience to date. I remember a series of brilliant TV adverts that each played a scene out that looked as though someone was doing harm. Then it played it from a different perspective that showed that in fact exactly the opposite was happening.
Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, always gets a bad press because a few days after the crucifixion of Jesus, he wouldn’t believe that he was alive again - until he saw the nail marks in his hands and feet. What we often forget is that all the other disciples also had a problem interpreting what they saw. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t conform to the natural law as they understood it. But then they came to understand that being in the presence of God’s Messiah took them into new realms of experience.
Many other people witnessed the resurrected Jesus but for whatever reasons, they decided that what they were seeing must have some other explanation and just carried on with life as though nothing unusual had happened. I’m reminded of the words of a line from one of the poems of Frederick Langbridge: ‘Two men look out through the same bars: One sees the mud and one the stars.’
Many people see Jesus as an historical figure, even a man of great insight and understanding, a man of compassion, a revolutionary and more. All of that is true, but it’s a one dimensional image of Jesus. The fully rounded picture shows him as the man who is God; the man who lived, died, and lives again; the man who, because of that, can reconcile us to our creator and be a living presence in our lives today.
But to accept all of that might mean having to change our perspective and perception of the facts and admit that our first impressions and preconceived ideas might be wrong. Would we want to go that far? I wonder.

- Graham Robinson