I've recently got back from two weeks in Zambia, where I was representing the Church of England at the worldwide meeting of the Anglican consultative Council.

Among other things, we discussed how to be a follower of Jesus Christ in a world of difference.

Living with difference and diversity is one of the great challenges of modern life. Britain has, of course, always been a hotchpotch of different nationalities and cultures (why do you think we call the meat from a cow, beef, and that from a pig, pork, except that the Normans invaded us in 1066?)

But nowadays there is a very visible and rapidly evolving diversity in almost all our communities, and for some people this hasn't always been easy to make sense of.

But for me, meeting with people from hundreds of countries around the world reminded me of our common humanity.

I began each day with a small group of Christian leaders and lay people from countries as diverse as Brazil, India, South Africa, Canada, Kenya and Mauritius.

It was our similarities as much as our differences that astonished me. We may speak different languages.

We may live in very different contexts.

But we were united in our concern to listen to each other and understand our differences; and deeper still we were united in our desire for peace, and our desire to enjoy the things that really make the world go round – family, friendship, food on the table (oh, and perhaps football as well).

Zambia is one of Africa's more stable economies, but there is still poverty that is shocking and unsettling to the western eye.

And yet I have rarely encountered such joy.

Maybe if we focused on the things that matter, the differences we observe in others would not feel such a threat.