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Good morning. During the lockdown, my wife and I have been digging through our old holiday photos.  And we found pictures of Trier in the far west of Germany.  Trouble was neither of us could remember how we ended up there – it’s a bit off the beaten track. But we did remember that we loved the town and two buildings in particular stuck in our minds. One is the Cathedral – which may well have the most ornate interior of any building I’ve ever seen.  There’s no denying that it’s beautiful but it was a bit overwhelming– it was difficult to know where to look first. The second is the Basilica – a short walk away.  The Basilica may well be the plainest Church building I have ever been in.  It’s a huge place – very high ceiling and a floor about the size of a football pitch, but apart from a few basics – like chairs, a pulpit and a platform at one end – it’s pretty much empty.  And yet walking into that space felt just as overwhelming to me as the ornate Cathedral we had visited earlier. The structures couldn’t have been more different.  But having spent a bit of time in both of them I was struck by how it was the similarities between them that made the biggest impact.   However different they looked they were both built for the same purpose – to provide a place where people could spend time with God in surroundings that they would find helpful. Perhaps it’s a reminder that in a world where it’s very easy to focus on our differences – from big things like religion to more personal ones like relationships and family structures – if we scratch below the surface at our underlying values, aims, and motivations we’ll often find much more that unites than divides us. Lord God help us in our dealings with one another to constantly look past our external differences and instead look for the common threads that unite us.  Amen