The Stories We Tell About Other People
What Moses’ marriage, a nervous speaker, and the book of Numbers reveal about how easily we misjudge
One of the unexpected gifts of writing here each day is the opportunity to explore passages that might otherwise remain tucked away in the corners of Scripture.
Today’s reflection centres on one such story: a brief and easily overlooked episode that raises uncomfortable questions about prejudice, assumptions, and the stories we tell ourselves about other people.
Thank you, as always, for making this daily work possible.
Your support gives me the freedom to keep writing and to explore these often-overlooked corners of Scripture and the questions they raise about ordinary life.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to hear a well-known Christian speaker at a local church.
He is someone I have admired for a long time.
Not because he is famous, but because he has an extraordinary gift for communication.
Some people can take the simplest story and make it utterly compelling. They seem to know instinctively how to hold a room, when to pause, when to smile, and how to make every sentence feel as though it matters.
He is one of those people.
When we arrived, we discovered that our seats were directly behind him. It gave me the chance to do something I had wanted to do for some time: shake his hand and thank him for the way his work had helped me.
For a few moments, we chatted before the event began. What struck me was how nervous he seemed. This was not the calm, unflappable figure I had imagined.
He appeared uncertain, almost fragile. There was a vulnerability about him that I had not expected, and I remember thinking how easy it is to construct stories about people we have never really met.
From a distance, they can appear completely self-assured. But up close, they are often carrying the same anxieties and uncertainties as the rest of us.
It was a small moment, but one that remained with me.
Because within minutes, the story I had unconsciously written about this man began to dissolve. The person before me was not a larger-than-life figure immune to self-doubt.
He was simply a human being: gifted, certainly; experienced, undoubtedly; but still capable of trembling before stepping into the spotlight.
I was reminded that we do this all the time.
We look at people and imagine we know who they are. We see confidence and assume certainty. We see a single detail and quietly build an entire narrative around it.
Most of the time, we know far less than we think.
That moment came back to me as I reflected on a little-known story in the book of Numbers.
It is a story about assumptions, appearances, and the way God responds when people are judged by what others think they see.
