In the World – “Are you with Israel?”

“Are you with Israel?”

Those words were spoken by a terrified six-year-old girl named Romi on October 7, 2023.

I spent this past week traveling throughout Israel, hearing many stories from October 7—many directly from the lips of survivors themselves. Some are so horrifying that they are difficult to process. But one story in particular has stayed with me.

Romi was six years old on October 7. Along with her three-year-old sister, she was fleeing Sderot with her parents after they heard the rocket sirens filling the early morning air. They tried to escape by car, but Hamas terrorists attacked their vehicle. Romi’s father decided it would be better to flee on foot. He grabbed his three-year-old daughter and made a run for it, but the terrorists shot him as he tried to get his daughter to safety. He told her to run back to the car.

A Bedouin man witnessed what was happening and tried to get Romi’s mother and the two girls to the police station, unaware that terrorists had already taken control of it. With the mother and daughters back in the vehicle, the man got into the driver’s seat and made a second attempt to get them to safety. The car was attacked again. Both the driver and Romi’s mother were killed. Somehow, the two little girls survived, hiding on the floor in the back seat.

When an Israeli police officer finally approached the car, Romi was terrified. She didn’t know if he was there to rescue her or hurt her. So she asked him a question that broke my heart:

“Are you with Israel?”

The officer assured her that he was with Israel and had come to help. Romi responded, “Take us. I am here with a baby.” The officers then rescued the girls and brought them to safety.

While hearing this story, I couldn’t help but think of another person who asked a remarkably similar question.

In Joshua 5, Israel was preparing to enter the Promised Land. Moses was dead, Joshua was now leading the nation, and Jericho stood before them. Joshua encountered a man standing before him with a drawn sword.

Joshua asked him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?”

The answer was unexpected:

“No.”

The man identified himself as the commander of the LORD’s army. He wasn’t there to take Joshua’s survey and pick Joshua’s team. In realizing this, Joshua’s response was to fall down and worship.

There’s an important lesson here for us, especially when the world around us is filled with conflict.

We naturally want to know, “Whose side are you on?”

But Scripture ultimately points us toward a better question:

“Whose side am I on?”

That doesn’t mean pretending that good and evil are indistinguishable. They aren’t. October 7 was not morally ambiguous. Murdering innocent people, taking hostages, and deliberately targeting civilians is evil. We should have the courage to call evil what it is.

But even when we are certain that something is wrong, we must be careful not to assume that God belongs to our team simply because we believe we are on the right one.

God doesn’t need to come over to our side. We need to come under His authority.

Perhaps that is one of the things I have been reminded of most strongly this week in Israel. In a land marked by thousands of years of conflict, it is easy to divide the world into “us” and “them.” And sometimes that distinction really does matter.

But ultimately, there is a higher allegiance.

Not “Is God on my side?” but “Am I on God’s side?”

Because the safest place in this broken world isn’t found in knowing that God agrees with us.

It is found in surrendering ourselves to Him.