By Sally Ann McLean

Below are the words of a refrain to a song that was popular in the latter part of the last century; but, like many songs, the lyrics sing a truth that is timeless. The verses of the song tell about a young man’s dilemma in trying to decide whether to pursue either a certain young lady or to make a move towards her older sister; the refrain, however, carries a wider application for us all.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Did you ever have to finally decide
To pick up on one and let the other one slide?
It’s not often easy; it’s not often kind.
Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Some folks proudly tell me they won’t make a decision about anything until all the facts are in, that this is the only rational way to live, and any less empirical approach to life simply would be empty-headed. An empiric is one who thinks that practical experience based on tangible or observable experience is the sole source of knowledge and is a person who would have little patience with those who hold a more deductive worldview.

The political campaign season has just come to an end, and I wonder if those empirical people voted. I suppose they did, but I question how they could have voted for people they very probably have never met or talked with. All the facts about the candidates could not have been known. It cannot be predicted with a high degree of certainty how a given candidate will behave once in office — promises made are not necessarily promises kept, spin doctors have been busy all during the campaigns and even televised sound bites were not unrehearsed. It seems to me that the empiricists among us, along with the voters who do not insist upon first-hand experience, after informing themselves as best they can, ultimately must rely upon hearsay evidence as they casts their ballots. They must weigh the testimony of others as they read the Voters’ Pamphlet. Haven’t they let a degree of faith — the non-observable and the non-tangible — seep into their individual decision-making process?

A great many decisions, it seems to me, are necessarily made before all the facts are known. Consider how we choose our spouses, doctors, employees and colleges. We date likely marriage candidates before making or accepting a proposal, but all our questions about our intended cannot possibly be answered before we walk down the aisle. We talk to trusted friends about their doctors and the treatment they have received at their hands and hope we fare as well. We read job applications and make hiring decisions. We pore over college brochures and mail in our registrations checks. How many of these decisions are made more with faith than with fact?

If we waited until are the facts are known and until the jury is back in, wouldn’t we be frozen into inactivity? There is too much of life to live for us to let that happen. There is too much work to be done in God’s kingdom for us to sit on our hands or our votes or our checkbooks until all the risk factors are removed, until all the unknowns are quantified.

I wonder if it would be wiser, as we make our individual and corporate decisions, to remember what kind of people we are. We are Christians, people of love, people of faith, people called to action. Let us unashamedly acknowledge the role faith plays in our decision-making process by being compassionate, generous and active stewards in the many aspects of our lives — even and perhaps especially when all the facts are not yet known.

By Emilie Shimkus

After college, I took my English degree and moved back home with my parents while applying for any and every job in the publishing industry. “Service” was not foremost in my mind, I have to admit. I was too old for youth group, and too busy waiting tables, serving coffee, and answering phones to join the monthly service projects. In short, I was busy doing a whole lot of nothing-I-really-wanted-to-be-doing. I was waiting for something important and I thought that would be a real, grown-up job.

Instead, the something important turned out to be a tropical storm.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, my church at the time—Messiah Lutheran in Auburn, WA—joined with several churches in our region to build a combined mission team. We became part of thousands of volunteers working to clear the wreckage and support the people of New Orleans and the surrounding communities.

Mission Team volunteers and with staff at the Samaritan Center in Mandeville, Louisiana. I'm on the far left, standing.

I have a lot of stories and vivid memories about the mission itself—the work we did, the people we met and spoke with, and the incredible communion of meaningful work with friends and strangers.

A flooded wedding album and other precious keepsakes at a home we helped to re-roof.

I have pages of journal entries about the things I saw and learned about grief, composure, faith, and resilience. But here I want to focus on WHY I went. The moment the pastor announced the trip in worship one Sunday, I simply knew I had to go. I was called.

There were a lot of reasons not to go to Louisiana. It was incredibly inconvenient, for one; I had to get to the health department for shots, buy steel toed-boots for working in the debris, and ready myself for a week of sleeping on floors.

Sanding down the damaged, flooded, and certified "toxic" floors after we gutted the building. It's not a fuzzy picture. That's concrete and plaster dust.

Even worse, I was making ends meet at an internship and three different jobs with less-than-forgiving bosses. Requesting that much time off on short notice could get me fired.

But for all that, I had to go. I knew it was something I could do. I barely had a savings account, much less the ability to write a check for the volunteers on the ground. I couldn’t send money, but I could send myself. I could be hands and feet.

When it comes to supporting the things you believe in, my parents taught my sister and me that time is a precious and valuable commodity. Rather than bemoan the lack of gifts under the tree one tight Christmas, our family volunteered to sponsor immigrant families who didn’t even have trees. We regularly visited a dozen or more elderly “aunts and grandmas,” spending a couple of hours a couple of Saturdays every month in rest homes and teeny apartments, each one filled to the brim with lifetimes of memorabilia and stories.

Whether you can afford to write the check, and especially when you can’t, I believe it’s crucial to acknowledge the value of personal service. It’s too easy to dismiss the things you feel powerless to change.

Cars blown off the roads in the hurricane.

The steps were fully intact. The brick house they once led to on the banks of the Pontchartrain was gone.

For me, going to New Orleans was the first time I felt “powerful” in service; and by powerful, I mean strong and capable and empowered by God in the circumstance. That feeling was magnified one day of the trip when I interviewed the Pastor of one of the churches we were working with. I asked him “Why is it important that we send people instead of fatter checks,” when those check might do so much more. He answered: “To us, you are Christ.”

Distributing groceries to the emergency food banks in Gulfport.

God called me to believe and have faith in my own inherent value as a willing body. In service, He called me to bring that faith to others, to give them my strength when their own was failing.

I can do that.