All Things New 1/4/42
Scripture: Revelation 21: 1-7.
Text: Revelation 21: 5; “Behold, I make all things new.”
The New Year! It has come again after sun and moon and stars have steadily gone through their unchanging orbits and man-made calendars and clocks have marked the passing of one more year. No matter with what reluctance or with what eagerness puny people greet it, a new year is here and an old one passed. Time carries all of us on.
Yet the first week of 1942 has far more significance than a mere mark on the calendar. What does it mean to you? to me? Perhaps many things. Its first day meant a holiday to many, a celebration, perhaps opened with a party in fun and fellowship with one’s friends. It is inventory time, when you take stock not only of your business, but of your habits, your ideas and ideals, your relationships. For some it is the annual occasion for making new and noble resolutions which later may or may not be broken. It represents a chance to start all over again with a new clean page upon which to write the record of our living. It offers to our expectant eyes the possibility of adventure, exploration of the unknown, finding new possibilities and opportunities.
Or if we let it be so, it can be just a factory whistle starting the same routine over again for another day, another year.
It seems possible that in the right spirit we can make this new year what we will. Whatever the year 1942 holds in store for us in the way of actual events, whether they will be good or bad, pleasing or painful, rewarding or penalizing, will depend largely on the attitude we ourselves maintain. “What happens to you never matters so much as what happens in you.”
The way you and I look at circumstances, how we handle them, what we do with them, determines their ultimate quality, so far as we are concerned, more than conceding what they do to us.
The New Year, particularly this new year, is not just another grind if we will it to be otherwise.
The writer of the book of Revelation gives a word picture of Him who sits upon the throne as saying, “Behold, I make all things new.” Jesus said to his hearers, “A new commandment I give unto you.” [John 13: 34]. Probably neither the author not the Master meant to define “new” as something that had never been before. Rather than that is probably meant “renewed” - another order, an eternal principle of rright recalled anew to our attention.
The year is like a new sheet of writing paper, or another page in a ledger, or book of record, wherein you and I have a chance, once more, to write clearly, fairly and well, resolving to avoid mistakes or blots.
Change the figure for a while. Take as our analogy a ship sailing out to sea. [Dangers of sea and storm lie ahead. Enemies threaten destruction.]
But we can sail the ship with courage. We can be alert. We can take advantage of a sailor’s knowledge of wind and tide and stars. We can put our trust in the Great Pilot.
This is not a year that we can live in safety. Our way of living is threatened. Our nation and our neighbor nations are under enemy attack. We are involved in a gigantic effort to oppose evil forces and governments. The struggle is worth great sacrifices.
In the midst of this danger and effort, we are asked to pray. Our President asked that we pray on New Year’s Day for divine guidance and protection for our nation.
Another appeal now comes to us asking that everyone pray for the nation for one minute at 6:00 PM daily for the duration of the war.
I would go even farther than that. I think that we ought to pray for our nation in war and in peace. I like the request of the President when he asked that we pray for God’s guidance and protection.
I think that we should not approach God, informing that we have a righteous cause and asking Him to be on our side. He knows what is righteous. It seems to me that our prayers should be in the spirit of the martyr President Lincoln whose concern was not that God should be on the side of the government, but that the government should be on God’s side.
Let us pray during these days for God’s guidance upon our leaders, that they may lead us in what is right and that we may all be given the strength to accomplish it. Let us resist the corrosion of blanket hatred; let us take no satisfaction in butchery or ruthlessness. Let us pray for God’s mercy on all who would do what is right and his enlightenment on all who know not the right.
Let us pray for a world that shall one day learn to live in cooperative brotherhood under God’s guidance, that wars shall not be necessary to our grandsons and their sons.
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dates and places delivered:
Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, January 1, 1939 AM (first half)
Wisconsin Rapids, January 4, 1942