 You know, I was watching a program last night on Netflix, it was a documentary on the history of the war in Vietnam that America was involved in in the 1960s and I watched it because I was curious about the history behind the context in which that war took place in the 1960s and was helped to discover that Vietnam had been at war for generations with various colonial powers dominating and controlling that country and controlling the outcomes of those people and taking from them self-determination and independence and their own identity and so on. And then bringing it right up to the 60s and the Vietnam War that most of us were more aware of than some of the other history I'm alluding to the program enlightened me about. And I loved it because the documentary showed just how very complex the whole Vietnam issue was. I also liked it because it interviewed a range of people. There were politicians from both sides, Vietnamese politicians and the American politicians, Western politicians. It also interviewed journalists from both sides and soldiers from both sides, American soldiers that had served in Vietnam and also Vietnamese soldiers that had fought in the same war and had both of their perspectives and it had footage from the actual war and behind the scenes of things I'd never seen before. And I thought it was fascinating the mesh, the mixture, the complexity of political agendas versus the plight of ordinary common humanity that was being caught up in the middle of it all. I know there's been many other world events since then and are going on right now that are equally as messy and complex. But it reminded me again the need for us to have a capacity for complexity to not just take one person's version of something that is complex. I've never seen a documentary where so many voices were allowed to speak about something with a clarity the only hindsight can give as I suppose. And I want to appeal to as I think as humans and certainly leaders and thinkers and articulators and communicators of stuff that we want to say to people that we are better if we are widely read. We are better at doing what we're doing. We're better people. We're better humans. We're better leaders and communicators. We are better if we listen wider, if we learn to keep our mouth shut and we are slow to speak and quick to listen and to immerse ourselves in the complexity of what we would like to simplify all the time. I make black and white all the time and either or all the time or take sides which is why recently I've been speaking as some of you know about my concern for the loss, the removal of nuance from our humanity, from our relationships, from our world and the world is more divided than ever because of our refusal to allow each other nuance. And so watching this documentary and seeing the multiple layers and the multiple shades and nuances involved in the Vietnam conflict made me aware again how so much of life is just not simple. And I want to encourage you to think about that today and something in your world that you are oversimplifying or you've allowed someone to oversimplify for you and you're kind of realizing you know what it's just not that simple that there are other people's shoes I need to look at this from. There are other perspectives that I don't have in the company I keep that I should search out and look at this through their eyes and experience it from their point of view so that I might have a well rounded thought through more balanced view and opinion and voice about stuff that is going on in our world right now and has gone on in our world historically. I think it makes us better humans. I think it makes us more attractive to follow in various kinds of leadership. I think it makes people feel that we are intentional about being balanced and about listening and about taking multiple points of view into account before we say anything about the things we like to often say something about shallowly without having thought it through. And I certainly think we've been guilty of that in the church for generations where we've been either all black and white this or that God or the devil right or wrong you know saint or sinner for or against. And I think we have done ourselves a disservice by creating those mindsets and those cultures in the church when the truth is we live in a very complicated world and we need to commit to becoming more thoughtful and more studious and more curious. I'm more sitting in the seat of learners so that when we do have to give an opinion answer a question bring wisdom to someone share an idea. It is coming from a life that is committed to be thorough and thoughtful and careful and measured about what we say. So let me add that to the mix of how you do life in the coming weeks and months. I think it will make us all better at what we do. Alright thanks.