『我若不信在活人之地得見耶和華的恩惠，就早已喪膽了』

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)

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As the year of 2011 is quickly approaching the end, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you my family’s journey in the year. We are grateful to have you as our friends, brothers or sisters to accompany and to encourage my family during our good times and our bad times. Most importantly, we are indebted to our gracious Lord for His provision and protection in 2011.

Year 2011 was quite a challenging year for my family – Our decision to attend a newly established church HoCL and our daughter had her milestone as a college freshman, are key highlights to my family. The decision of leaving a church which we had attended for 10+ years has never been easy on us. We were hesitated initially, of course, because we have to leave our comfort zone. Especially our kids need to separate from their friends at youth group. Before we started this new journey, several families of God got together to pray for the decision regularly.  To be sure, I even asked three things from our Lord to confirm the decision. These three things were answered timely. When January came, we celebrated the new birth of our HoCL church with a grateful heart. As I look back to this boldness move, I can only say it is full of God’s goodness and grace.

The transition of my daughter from high school to college marks the beginning of our empty nesting. To us, this might be just a small step, but to her it would be a giant leap. We asked from our Lord to guide her and to provide her a good spiritual environment in order to nourish her. As the Fall semester ends, we were glad to see her back home “survived”, We thank God for His protection. We understand that not for long, my other two kids would be leaving home too. At that time, we may worry even more but we know God will be their guide if they could follow Him closely. The mixed feeling of parenthood reminds me of God’s love recorded in the book of Isaiah.

“In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. 他們在一切苦難中、他也同受苦難．並且他面前的使者拯救他們．他以慈愛和憐憫救贖他們．在古時的日子、常保抱他們、懷搋他們。(Isaiah以賽亞書 63:9)”

From Israelites’ experience, we can be sure that God is always with us even we are distressed and He lifts us up because He is Emmanuel. What a gracious God we have!

In the middle of this year, we were also experienced the fear of resurrection of my wife’s illness. By God’s grace, we discovered it was not the case after doctor’s extensive examination. Once again we experienced God’s protection in my family. From this experience we can slightly understand the feel of king David’s psalm, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.我雖然行過死蔭的幽谷，也不怕遭害‧因為你與我同在‧你的杖，你的竿，都安慰我‧(Psalm 23:4)”

In this Christmas season, let’s remember that He showed us His love by giving us His only son Jesus Christ. Apostle Paul taught us that it is God who seeks us instead of us seek Him:

“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 及至時候滿足，神就差遣他的兒子，為女子所生，且生在律法以下，要把律法以下的人贖出來，叫我們得著兒子的名分‧(加拉太書 4:4-5)”

My dear friends, brothers and sisters, I am confident that we will see God’s goodness and grace in the years to come if we continue to follow Him day by day, closely. Let me use this opportunity to say,

May you have a joyful and peaceful Christmas and New Year!

May our Lord be with you and your family, as always!

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As Christmas time is closing in, the schools are also wrapping up their semesters. Last Wednesday, we spent 8+ hours on the road to bring our daughter back from her college for winter break. Even with the good weather condition, my wife and I still felt the driving is physically challenging – ah…what can I say, we are not young anymore. After the trip, I was thinking, “It would be great if we can have a transporter machine same as the one in the “Star Trek” – it would “beam” up us from one location to another location almost instantly.” I realize that this may be just a fantasy but who knows, it could become a reality someday in the future, if our Lord is permitting 🙂

Talking about the location switching, I still remember a quote “You’re the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.” from the movie “Die Hard 2”. Though it was intended to be sarcastic in the movie but it bears some insights to our life – wrong timing to show up in a location is already a bad move not even mention at wrong location. That is where all the accidents or awkward things we encounter. I could imagine no one wants to be in that shoe. But how many people know whether they are in the wrong location or not? This is a thought that I’d like to share with you this week.

Most of us know that besides affordability, “location” probably is the single most crucial factor if you ever want to buy or sell a real estate or to find a desired school district for your kids. No wonder someone used to say, “The three most important things about buying and selling property are location, location, location!”

How about “location” of one’s spirituality? Is there a right location or wrong location too? Yes, certainly. Apostle Paul indicated to us that our spiritual location before we received Jesus as our personal savior was: “we were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world  你們與基督無關 ，在以色列國民以外 ，在所應許的諸約上是局外人 ，並且活在世上沒有指望 ，沒有神 (Ephesians 2:12)”. By God’s grace, we were justified before Him as “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves 他救了我們脫離黑暗的權勢，把我們遷到他愛子的國裡 (Colossians 1:13)”. “遷 (transfer, remove from one place to another)” is a powerful word implies that we were literally removed from dominion of darkness (wrong location) and transferred into the kingdom of the Son (right location). It is a switching of location instantaneously!

Therefore, my dear friends, brothers and sisters, do you know where is your spiritual location? Is it in the right location? If it is, are you heading the right direction toward Him? Please remember that every good and perfect gift is coming from Him, if we are in the right location. During this Christmas season, let’s once again remember the parable of true vine (John 15) – we need to remain in Him and then He will remain in us.

Last Wednesday, we had a free breakfast bonanza at my working place to celebrate the coming of “holidays”. Nowadays, corporations do not want to mention “Christmas” anymore.  The cafeteria was filled with people who took advantage of this free offer. While I was there, I overheard one of the cafeteria clerks said, “I have never seen so many people in the cafeteria this year”.  Yes, it was quite a scene to see so many people around. But this is just an exceptional case.

This lets me think of a drastically different scene from 2000 years ago. When God decided to give us the greatest “free” gift – His only begotten son Jesus Christ, what was mankind’s reaction? I know for sure He is not as welcomed as the free breakfast we just had. Isn’t this ironic? As we recall from the Scripture (Luke 2), Jesus was born in a manger at a small town called Bethlehem because there was no guest room for Him. And, there is neither a “welcome party” nor a “baby shower” being held later to celebrate His birth except shepherds in the field came to receive Him.

The sad part in our society is, 2000 years later, most of people celebrate holidays do not even know what is the reason for; because schools, corporations, public institutions and governments are not allowed to teach or to indicate the true meaning of celebration anymore. The celebration therefore becomes commercialized and has lost its meaning in the middle of shopping frenzy. Richard De Haan, President of RBC Ministries, wrote a very enlightening story about the phenomenon of trying to ignore the true meaning intentionally. He wrote,

Two women who were dressed in their finest were having lunch together in a very exclusive restaurant. A friend saw them and came over to their table to greet them. “What’s the special occasion?” she asked. One of the women said, “We’re having a birthday party for the baby in our family. He’s 2 years old today.” “But, where’s the baby?” the friend asked. The child’s mother answered, “Oh, I dropped him off at my mother’s house. She’s taking care of him until the party’s over. It wouldn’t have been any fun with him along.”

Isn’t this very ridiculous to celebrate a birthday without the birthday baby?  As this phenomenon has become more and more acceptable today because of the consideration and tolerance against others that we were asked to do, the recognition and acknowledgement of the true meaning of celebration would become more and more blurry in our minds. There is a serious warning, however, in the book of 1 John that we should remember:

No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. 凡不認子的就沒有父．認子的連父也有了。(1 John 2:23)

May God help this country to recognize the true meaning of Christmas and may our Lord be exalted by all nations!

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Last Tuesday when I entered my workplace, I ran into one of my colleagues.

He burst out one phrase, “It is all your fault!”

“Sure” I smiled and responded. I know he was joking and we laughed after I responded. This is a kind of typical and funny greeting to start a day around here.

Seriously though, if you think it a little bit further; no one is perfect and as a result finding a fault from a person is relatively easy. Just open newspaper or internet, you can quickly glimpse through those flying scud missiles among Presidential candidates’ character, for example. But, how many of them would admit their faults? Probably very few, right? That’s reason we call it politics. Ironically, we seem to accept that politics is a way of life in our government. The chilling fact is this phenomenon is not a singular case. You can see it almost everywhere.  For those who are working under a corporation environment, you probably would understand what I was talking about.

To admit making mistakes is seldom a human nature, as we all know. I myself used to be a man of unwilling to admit mistakes I made. I find that this is rooted from my “pride”.  The consequence is it constantly causes me grief and troubles. As years went by, I ask our Lord to help me learn my lessons. Though I am making progress, there are still a lot of rooms left to be desired. I view this is an essential “molding process” that our Lord devised for us as apostle Paul indicated to us, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 因為他預先所知道的人 ，就預先定下效法他兒子的模樣 ，使他兒子在許多弟兄中作長子” (Romans 8:29)

Talking about finding fault with others, there is another spectrum that, I think, is important to us. Sometimes, our pride would mistake us that we are “somebody” – thinking that we have the right to judge others. This is a dangerous thought because only our Lord has the authority in judging. This is why our Lord Jesus taught us that, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 為什麼看見你弟兄眼中有刺，卻不想自己眼中有梁木呢” (Luke 6:41).

Dwight L Moody used to say, “Moses spent forty years in the king’s palace thinking that he was somebody; then he lived forty years in the wilderness finding out that without God he was a nobody; finally he spent forty more years discovering how a nobody with God can be a somebody” Therefore, my brothers and sisters, finding faults with others can only be helpful in edifying him / her when we are speaking truth in love, not in our prideful mind.

May our Lord grant us wisdom to differentiate what can be changed and what can’t be changed!