What is Truth?

A summer day dawns. Perfect blue sky stretches above a verdant green countryside. Across the field towards the wood, a layer of mist hangs, neither touching the earth nor touching the sky. 

The mist obscures a section of forest; I can see above and below but there is a section which lies hidden behind the filmy white.

What is truth?

Pilate asked Jesus, and although Jesus is The Truth, Pilate just couldn’t see it. There was a mist clouding his vision.

Perspectives distort and cloud our perception of truth. We argue over politics, over religion, because we see as if through a glass darkly – things are distorted and obscured in our earthly understanding. 

But while we have mental agility and acuity it behoves us to exercise our minds and our spirits to understand as best we can, with the help of God. Because a day may come when the mist settles more permanently over our minds.

Elderly folk who are slipping into dementia often ‘confabulate’. That is a word new to me but one which I am using more and more in relation to a dear loved one. I am hearing her declare things to me day by day and because I know some of them are definitely not true, I then begin to question the rest. For her, she is speaking the truth. She is not trying to lie or pull the wool over my eyes. She is constructing a scenario on the hoof, as she speaks, which she herself may not remember in a few minutes. She is confabulating.

There are horrors going on in our world right now, more horrors than usual, and the truth is obscured. It is lost in the mist over Ukraine, with the shooting down of the passenger plane and the terrible death wreaked on innocent people. It is hidden in the historic and thick thick mists hanging over Gaza and Jerusalem, where it seems everyone confabulates to justify their own actions. 

Jesus knows the truth. Jesus is the Truth. One day this mist will lift and we shall all see his face, and we shall see clearly. We will know the truth, and the truth will truly set us free.

In the meantime, we walk by faith. We walk, trusting in Truth, trusting in Jesus, trusting that he can negotiate the way through the confabulations and out the other side. It is not a case of the blind leading the blind, but of Perfect Love leading the beloved.

That’s you. And me. Have a great day, resting in Jesus despite the mist hanging over so much of the world.