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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.