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The subject of the message, "My New Year's Wish." my new year's wish, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the second verse of that scripture. He came to my desk with quivering lip.

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The lesson was done. "Dear teacher, I want a new leaf," he said. "I have spoiled this one." I took the old leaf, stained and blotted, and gave him a new one, all unspotted.

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And into his sad eyes smiled, "Do better now, my child." I went to the throne with quivering soul. The old year was done. Dear Father, hast thou a new leaf for me?

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I have spoiled this one. He took the old leaf, stained and blotted, and gave me a new one, all unspotted. And into my sad heart smiled, "Do better now, my child." This is a time when we wish for ourselves and others a happy new year.

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These oft-repeated words are taken for granted in many instances. Seldom do we take the time to express in detail or to any degree of specificity what we mean we mean by wishing another a happy new year? For some, it may mean wishing that the other person may receive all the desires of his or her heart, that the person will get all

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things that he or she wants. But this is not likely to happen. Most people have such a long shopping list of things they want out of life that it seems impossible to satisfy all their desires. Then again, if many of us received all the things we want, we would soon discover that

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the things we wished for and thought would contribute to our happiness brought additional problems. And in some cases, they cause pain rather than pleasure and contribute to unhappiness. If we face the threshold of a new year, what is our wish for the future?

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This new year is not like having a fairy godmother who will grant us certain wishes, whatever they may be. Our wish is like a leap in the dark. Our wish is an expression of our faith.

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Our wish is a revelation of our concern. Our wish is an expression of our hope. We all have our wishes. Making the journey from the old to the new, what is our wish?

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I was in the darkness. I could not see my words or the wishes of my heart. Then suddenly there was a great light. Let me into the darkness again."

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Paul, in writing to the Philippians, expresses to them his wish. expressed in a greeting or a salutation. It's a wish for people who live in the new age. Says to them, "Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ." As we share our wishes one with another, permit me to

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to share with you my wish for the new year. First, I wish for you freedom, freedom to respond to the challenge of the new year decisively and courageously.

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As a responsible individual, I wish for you freedom. January the first is a significant day for black people in this country because it marks the issuance

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of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln Lincoln. It was a milestone in the struggle for freedom. The Emancipation Proclamation is a legal document which liberated over four million slaves from physical bondage. But I wish for you more than freedom from physical bondage, more

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than freedom of locomotion, the liberation of the body. I wish for you complete freedom, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit, freedom to act, freedom to be. To be free is not to be in bondage to the past.

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of the mind and heart, this is truly what we may consider great liberation. For there is an ongoing struggle facing the peoples of this world, and that is the struggle to be free. In the Nativity story, which is recorded by Matthew, Herod is determined to destroy freedom. He seeks to nip it in the bud. He sends forth his troops to destroy

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the children in Bethlehem. And Herod considers freedom a threat to his throne. wants to crush creativity and stifle imagination which ushers in the new age. Herod wants to destroy the kingdom of goodness, justice, and truth. But I wish

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for you freedom, for we still have the Herods of our day. People are still in slavery, tyranny of oppression in South Africa with its vile system of racial segregation, the present struggle of the people in Poland, the unsettled state of affairs in the Middle East, and the alienation which we have even in our own

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country of one group against the other, remind us all that the peoples of this world are still engaged in the struggle to be free. I wish for you freedom of the mind, a mind unshackled by petty jealousies, a mind not bound by prejudice, a mind which is not a victim of malice.

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I wish for you freedom." Paul, as he writes this letter, is a prisoner in Rome. His body is in chains, yet he's free. And I wish for you freedom, yes, freedom of the body, but above all of that, the freedom

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of the mind, the freedom of the spirit, the freedom for you to be you. I wish for you freedom. For stone walls do not a prison make, none bars a cage.

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I wish for you and yours freedom to think and act responsibly. You know, there are many conditions that may seem to be designed to prevent just the very thing I wish for you, freedom. We live in ghettos, and we are somewhat hemmed in sometimes by economic circumstances.

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We are hemmed in sometimes by educational offerings that we may or may not have taken advantage of. And all of these are certain limitations. There are certain boundaries, and all of us have some kind of boundary.

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We have a certain finiteness. We are bound by who we are and what we can do, and yet within those limitations we can exercise real freedom. Freedom.

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"I wish for you freedom." I said Paul was a prisoner, and yet he was free. And so you know it's always a challenge. One person said to me some years ago when I was going to live in a small town, he said,

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"Now, Reverend," he said, "As you go to a small town, see, one thing you have to watch is many times when people live in a small town, they have small ideas. And it's always a challenge to sort of live in a small town and yet have big ideas and that's exactly what we see in Jesus.

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He was free, he was not hemmed in by the environs of Nazareth, he lived beyond Nazareth, he embraced the world. And this is important. Paul is a prisoner but yet he's free. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned by

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Hitler and yet his soul was free. Martin Luther King was in a Birmingham jail and yet his soul was free. And I wish for you that freedom of the mind that prejudice and malice cannot shackle. I wish for every one of us freedom, freedom. If I I have freedom in my love, and in my soul I'm free.

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Angels alone that soar above enjoy such liberty. I wish for you freedom to respond to the challenges of your tomorrow. Freedom. that response. Responsibility really means responding according to your

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ability, not somebody else's. You know we all we often have the habit of saying what is someone else doing? What are they doing? And then we sort of say me too. But real responsibility means for each individual to respond according to his His or her responsibility, ability.

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His or her ability. That's what it really means. So I wish for you that freedom. The second place I wish for you grace.

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Grace. Really what grace is, acceptance. is acceptance. I wish for you the power to accept whatever life brings. Grace, that's grace. Power to accept whatever life brings. We don't know what it's

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going to bring in 1981, but I wish for all of us grace to accept what life brings. We look into the crystal ball of the future. We may see some sunny days and some dark and dreary days, but I wish for us the grace to accept every day whether dark or sunny and to use that day gloriously. I wish for you grace to

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accept the things that cannot be changed, to be able to accept that. And then to recognize that there are some things that ought to be changed, and to have the grace to go about changing those things, and to know the difference between the two. Sin abounds. There is separation, there is suffering, there is alienation,

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there is inhumanity to man. Violence walks the streets. Sin abounds. There is loneliness, there is agony, there is meaninglessness, there is despair. Sin abounds, but where sin abounds, grace doth the more abound. That whatever may be the obstacles that we face, no matter how difficult they are and all of the

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temptations that will surround us, to have grace that will enable us to accept the challenge, whatever that may be. Grace triumphs over sin. Acceptance is the key to living acceptance grace Paul says don't worry about me because I am sustained by grace you know I wish for you grace first of all you'd have the

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grace to accept yourself to accept yourself some of the problems that many people have in the world and that somehow spill over into all of the relationships they have is that they have not really come to grips with themselves. I wish for you Grace to accept yourself. To be able to know that self that God has made

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and that design that God has for that self and to be able to accept it. Be able to accept I saw a person here some time ago who had a flat nose. They didn't want to accept that. They wanted to have a keen nose.

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They wanted to have a surgical job done on the nose, because they didn't want to accept the kind of nose that God really made. Well, there are a lot of things that somehow we must learn to accept if we're really going to be the person God wants us to be in 1981, we must have grace to accept ourselves.

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Grace. Grace involves accepting other people. Now I know that there are some people, they're hard to accept. Some of us are pretty hard to accept, but to have grace to accept, to accept one another.

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I wish for us right here at Ebenezer that acceptance of each other. Some of us know except to one another. to have grace. You know, I don't have to take this, I don't have to take that. That's not grace. That may be arrogance or haughtiness or something else, but

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that's certainly not what Paul meant by grace. And no matter whatever we may have in all of our giving, if we don't have grace, it really doesn't matter it, amount to anything. We don't have grace. Grace. And Paul had all these things that we talk about. You know he had, he had all, all of the degrees that you'd expect a person to have. He stood at

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the feet of Gamaliel. You know he had all of the cultural things. He was born of the tribe of Benjamin. He was circumcised on the eighth day. You know he was a Pharisee among Pharisees. But he said of all of these things I count them as nothing and what I really want you to have is grace is to be able to accept Accept

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Acceptance, accept God's acceptance and be able to accept others grace When you have grace, grace triumphs Grace triumphs over the dragons of disorder, grace Grace enables one to somehow triumph over chaotic darkness.

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Grace enables us to triumph. For grace triumphs over the waters of destruction. I wish for you God's amazing grace. That's what we sang about just a short time ago, amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

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Saviour, wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see grace." It's amazing. It's amazing what grace does.

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we accept ourselves, when we accept one another, when we accept God, it's a wonderful thing that happens. And there are some things that will be difficult for you to accept, and for me to accept. I see it in my ministry.

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Some people who are on beds of affliction, who have a certain disease, who have a certain illness, "Oh, Reverend, I can't accept this." Well, we don't know what's coming our way, but somehow as we live our lives, we have to learn how to adjust, and we have to learn how to accept some things that we really don't

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like. That's what grace is. It's acceptance. is, it's acceptance. Paul said, "You know I have a thorn in the flesh." And I prayed

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to God that he would remove it, but God left it there. And he answered me as I prayed to him thrice, "My grace is sufficient for you, my acceptance." In other words, when we have the acceptance of God we are able to get over the high hills and go through the deep valleys that's grace, grace, God's grace. I wish for you grace,

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grace, grace. Lastly, I wish for you peace, freedom, grace, peace, peace. Oh that we had peace, peace among ourselves, peace. Oh how many of us really don't feel good about ourselves. To have peace of mind. I'm not talking about not having any struggle.

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That's not the kind of peace I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the kind of peace which is free from contentions and strife. Not the kind of peace which means complete absence of war, but I wish for you a kind of contentment which exists even in the midst of seas of discontent. I wish for you peace, not as the world

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give it different kind of peace. Some time ago at the Palace of Versailles we were shown the table on which the peace treaty was signed ending World War I. But before that ink on that paper was hardly dry, preparations were being made for World War II.

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Not peace as the world giveth, because it's given and taken away according to the whims of humankind. I wish for you a kind of inner quiet strength, kind of tranquility of heart, a kind of inner peace that confronts the difficult situations, so that we will really be peacemakers, peacemakers,

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just peace lovers everybody loves peace but they don't do much about making it you know something happened in the church you know we well I won't get involved in that mess and many people will stay away whenever there's a controversy wherever it is but Martin Luther King talks about the sword that

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heals in other words really when you have peace it may mean that there is a sword that has to be used but when that sword is used it has healing power and he was really talking about that when we were marching and we had the civil rights revolution that would the demonstrations were taking place in

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connection with that revolution and people were saying you know you're disturbing the peace you said this is the sword that he used that's what Jesus was talking about when he said I came not to bring peace that not the kind of peace you all are expecting where you're saying don't rock the boat but he's

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saying I came to bring us forward but that sword will heal. That sword will make you what you ought to be and so I wish for you peace. Peace. Peace within yourself, peace in your home. Peace as you go about on your job, peace all along the journey, I wish for you peace. Peace, that's a very good thing, sweet peace. That's what is our goal even now, kind

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of peace in the midst of the storms of life. Peace is that relationship in which we are reconciled not only to ourselves, but reconciled with our fellow man, reconciled with God. That relationship of oneness, oneness, oneness. That's why I like to always talk about the family because that represents oneness. That's why so often I talk about the

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fragmentation, so often fragmentation. Fragmented groups and yet there's not this oneness, that sweet oneness. That's what we need more, we need more of it here at Ebenezer. You know it's good to have our various groups but we ought to able to do some things together. You know, some of us can't sing together, you know,

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but the peace we sing about, that togetherness that we sing about in Christ, we need to be able to demonstrate it. Some of us can't work together, you know, I can't work with so-and-so, but that kind of peace that God gives, that kind of oneness, of family. That needs to be an expression of our daily lives. That's what

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the Christian faith is all about, and so I wish for you peace. Peace, yes, that's the kind of relationship that the Prophet was talking about when he talked about that day when men should beat their swords and to plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no longer. That's peace, yes, peace that

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the Prophet was talking about when he said that he looked forward to that day when every man would sit under his own vine and fig tree and there would be none to make him afraid. Peace, peace, sweet peace, that relationship that one has even in the midst of the troubled waters a certain calmness. So let Jesus Christ

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give you freedom, grace, and peace. Now I wish for you these things, but I can't give them to you. But I do know where we can all get them, and that's what Paul is saying as he writes this letter, "I wish for you grace and peace," and he talks about freedom because all of it all of that is within the context of Christian

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freedom, but he said you can get this through God our Father who reveals this through Jesus Christ, and that's the one. Without him we'll never have freedom. Without Him we'll never have a full manifestation of grace in our lives. Without Him we'll never have peace. Without Him we can never have the joy that we seek.

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I wish for you these as we make the journey, and that that God who comes to us through Jesus Christ will guide us all along life's way. As we come now to this time of dedication, to this time of commitment, I ask you to take Jesus Christ as your guide.

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