This weekend I was in the general Boston area. I conducted a beautiful wedding for Nevine Morgan and Keston Lewis in Billerica, and I attended the fantastic first year birthday party for my grandson, Josh, at the Orient Heights Yacht Club.In Billerica I watched as two people initiated a fresh start in life together. Their families and friends were there. We held the ceremony outside at the Billerica Country Club, and the guests sat on the lawn while the wedding party gathered in front of the gazebo. One side of the family enjoys a Muslim heritage and the other a Christian; so, we read from both the Koran and the New Testament.Two great religions Islam and Christianity. I say great because so many people follow them and because they both herald a monotheistic world view. Some people would argue about their respective validity by raising the question of truth. The Christians would point to the historicity of the events depicted in the Bible. I am not familiar enough with Islam to speak to the issue of historicity so, I’ll leave that one alone.However with regard to history supporting the truth of Christianity, I have started reading an interesting book: ‘I Am The Truth (Toward a Philosophy of Christianity)’, by Michel Henry. Henry claimed something rather astounding to me. He wrote:“It is not the corpus of New Testament texts that can offer us access to the truth, to that absolute truth of which the corpus speaks. On the contrary, it is truth and truth alone that can offer us access to itself and by the same token to that corpus, allowing us to understand the text in which truth is deposited and to recognise it there.”His argument is that history cannot provide convincing evidence of the truth. Why? Because life is bigger than any historical narrative. The historian picks and chooses from out of the flow of life what he or she will write down. The words are symbols to stand for real events and the real events are always much larger than any words can grasp. So, the words only point to something, but the thing to which they point is the truth that which actually happens.Likewise, Christianity is not true because the texts can be proven to have been written by people who witnessed the events. Christianity is true because when the texts claim that Jesus died for the sins of the world, He actually did. He is either the Son of God, and lives today, having been resurrected from the dead, or he was a trickster who got tricked by his own game. Truth stands out in relief from the pages of the Bible and touches a person. Many would say they have not been touched by those words. Others know that they know that they know, and what they know, like the peace that passes all understanding, is intuited directly not deduced from textual criticism.So, I charged Keston with the truth that I know: that a husband is to sacrifice himself, just as Christ sacrificed Himself, in order to present his bride spotless and to build her up, that is, to attend to her needs above his own. And we rehearsed the truth about love:“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)At the yacht club I watched my one-year-old grandson take it all in. He has a nature given by God that is already quite extraordinary. Perhaps this is his grandfather talking, who has lost any semblance of objectivity, but I don’t think so. Others commented on Josh’s temperament. He was patient and quiet for the entire length of time what some call a “good baby”. However, it was not just that Josh went into a stupid trance and zoned out. He was actively engaged watching and responding to people, and I was amazed that he had the stamina to maintain that basic stance with all the huge amount of stimuli coming at him. Many things were going on over a long period of time. When people came over to where he was sitting and they wanted to talk baby talk to him and wish him a happy birthday, often pinching a cheek, or tussling his hair, he just smiled and took it in. He does not fuss and demand his own way all the time. He certainly has interests, but he is also just as pleased to go along with his parents’ programme. So, he was held, passed around, talked to and otherwise played with for over four hours. There were well over 100 adults and children at this party. They had a guy blowing up balloons. They had a woman painting the faces of the children. They had so much food, I am feeling like I don’t need to eat for a week, and there was music. Josh took it all in as if to say, “They have to do this now; so, I will let them.”Why do I mention these two events? It is because in their own ways they present us with some basic truths. People often need to make a new and fresh start. Others need to let them, and even to support them. People also need to be patient with, but interested in one another. It takes someone coming to life with eyes that marvel at many mundane things, just because he has never seen them before. Sometimes it takes imagining that you are seeing something for the very first time. New beginnings and initial beginnings. Important moments. Truth? Truths.