———————————————————————————————————————–

Last Tuesday morning, I just came back from a one-day vacation. As soon as I entered my office, my next-door colleague stopped over my office immediately and said, “Tell me that this is NOT true – Bill told me that you took a vacation day yesterday in order to help the presidential campaign.”  “Ha…ha…ha, certainly not, I need to decide which side I am on first!” I answered.

This past election must have driven many of us nuts because of so many campaign surveys and calls have bombarded us.  It was finally over and the result came out on last Wednesday. No matter which side you chose, either Republican or Democratic, I believe you would hope the candidate could live through his promises and steer the country from her predicaments. An interesting observation was the Dow Jones Indices plunged more than 300 points the next day. It seems to reveal that a promising hope is not there as national problems continue to loom and financial budget cliff is imminent. This generates a question in my mind, “Did we choose the right side?”

In many situations, we were asked to choose sides. Frequently, however, we are afraid of choosing it because we are not sure which one is better – based on our limited knowledge, experience and information we received, we can only make an “educated guess”. This tells us how limited we are, as we couldn’t foresee the future and our crystal ball is always cloudy 🙂

There is a famous quote from President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War period. I believe most of you are very familiar with it. When President Lincoln responded to an inquiry about his view of the War in freeing the slavery, he said, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right”. This is an enlightened view of making a right decision in choosing side – all we have to concern about is on God’s side.  The fact is if we were on God’s side, then, we can be sure that even we were in the same situation as Joseph’s predicaments in the Egypt, we shall be successful and prospered.

The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. 約瑟住在他主人埃及人的家中，耶和華與他同在，他就百事順利‧  (Genesis 39:2)”

Do we know we are choosing the right side? This is a question puzzles many of us. I think it should not be that difficult. As Bible told us that we Christians have the promise from the Lord – He will send His Spirit to dwell in each one of us and help us to understand His truths (John 14:16). Therefore, if we can learn to listen to His guidance in every situation, I am sure we will be on God’s side all the time.

My dear brothers and sisters, we may be bound to make mistakes in choosing the right side initially, but we should not be staying in that mode forever. As long as we are willing to listen to Holy Spirit’s whisper, whether we turn to the right or to the left, our ears will hear a voice behind us, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21). In this crooked and rebellious generation, may God have mercy on us in order for us to stand firm on our belief.