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Good morning. On this day in 1871, the intrepid journalist Henry Morton Stanley finally tracked down the medical missionary and explorer David Livingstone, near Lake Tanganyika, in present-day Tanzania.

It seems there is some argument over whether he really greeted him with the famous words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’

But one thing is sure – Henry Morton Stanley was right in his presumption – the person standing before him really was David Livingstone.

However, making presumptions about others isn’t always helpful, and perhaps Henry Morton Stanley would have known that better than most.

He was born John Rowlands, the illegitimate son of a young mother who abandoned him to the care of relatives. He ended up in the workhouse, where he suffered abuse. At 18 he emigrated to the United States, and took on a new name. Perhaps he felt creating a fresh identity would free him from being judged on his background.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus warns us against judging others, so we will not be judged ourselves. If we don’t want to be limited by the labels that other people attach to us, then we in turn shouldn’t pigeon-hole others!

But what if, as may have been the case with Stanley, our greater concern is wrestling with ourselves over our own sense of who we are, and who we ought to be?

The Christian faith teaches that we don’t have to go to extremes – crossing oceans or changing our names, to reinvent ourselves. Instead, in turning to God we find release from being trapped by our past, and new freedom to become more fully ourselves.

As St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation … everything has become new!’

Redeeming God, in whose love we find true liberty, free us from narrow presumptions that constrain, so we may draw out the best in ourselves and in one another. Amen