1/3/65

Scripture: Revelation: 21: 1-7.

Text: Revelation 21: 5; “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new.”

More than once, for the sheer exhilaration of the experience, I have climbed up the side of a mountain in the darkness of early morning in order to look over its ridge at a beautiful sunrise. Now and then there was no sunrise; only fog, mist and rain. Sometimes the other side was flooded with the clear beauty of early morning and nothing seemed so inviting as the prospect of taking the new trail down the other side of the ridge.

The advent of a new year may seem somewhat like this experience. We have climbed up the steep grade, over rocks and past occasional thorns, sometimes breathless, sometimes miserable in cold and rain, sometimes exultant, always hopeful, to a summit from which we may try to see ahead. Then we pursue the adventure beyond the ridge.

Suppose we pause at the ridge to rest a little bit, catch up our panting breath, look back in remembrance down the trail over which we have come, and then look squarely ahead. Suppose we think of the climb in terms of the years of a human life and imagine not only one but perhaps 70 of those years. The long look back over the trail reminds one of much truth learned, and prepares one for the look ahead.

We are not always prepared, as we think we are, for the look ahead. Here is one who remembers his first day at school. Leaving the continuous protecting care of mother and home, he now spends more and more of each day with a teacher --- a different person from mother or father. Perhaps he wanted to cry on that first day of school over the strangeness of it. But gradually he sees that he can learn what is taught him, and can cope, in his own way, with the bigger boys on the playground. And he finds it good.

Then he remembers a New Year day when he was fourteen, and his short sleeves and short pants legs proclaim that he is becoming a man. For a moment he doesn’t want to be a man. The memories of carefree childhood playground are so happy he clings to them. Ahead he sees toil. He finds new emotions. Strangely the faces of girls he had called ugly become beautiful before his eyes. What is happening? Perhaps he has a new glimpse of right and wrong, too. And he faces the sky to pray. At length the day ceases to be terrifying and the adult world seems good and worth exploring.

This mixture of emotions comes repeatedly. On the day of his college commencement, he leaves behind his alma mater and he could weep over it -- only he won’t, for he is a man. His student friends he will see less frequently now. Ahead is the necessity of vocation. Is he adequate for it?

He never dreamed that, when he should stand beside his sweetheart to be married, any doubt could haunt his heart. But there it is. And for a panicky moment, like the youthful bride and groom in the stage drama “Our Town,” he wants to fly. It takes some such assurance as father or mother or some trusted counselor can give to blot out that sudden regret that he can not keep his bachelor freedom and at the same time assume the mutual responsibility of wedlock. But one look at his bride sweeps away the hesitation and he sees himself marching through the years with her at his side and merry children coming after. And he knows it will be good.

Probably he needs assurance again, perhaps when he fully realizes he is no longer a youth or even a young man. He cannot stand the exuberance of physical exertion which once made him an athlete. And he listens eagerly to what someone says who proclaims that “life begins at forty.” He is more eager than ever to make his mark in the hall of human progress while it can be made. He sees the contribution that can be made by maturity and seasoned judgment and once more he becomes eager.

Over ridge after ridge of life’s mountainous country he has come. And now he has reached the estate that younger folk always think of as “old age.” Shall he act like the merry old folk in a radio skit trying to be as young as they used to be with the slogan “Life begins at eighty?” Or is there a possibility of giving the world the fruit of his long life’s experience as did once Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes? And shall he shrink from the obvious end of the mortal trail, the dissolution of his flesh and the translation of his spirit?

Or shall he look ahead again with the confident spirit of adventure to the new trail over the ridge? Looking back he remembers that he has never been alone. Most of the time he has had traveling companions. Perhaps he had sometimes forgotten it. But his welfare has been tied up with theirs. And he had traveled with his Savior and Elder Brother.

Farmers have been driven together by their need until a Congress has to reckon with a “farm bloc.” Workmen, discontented with what they receive at the factory gate, form organizations to right their grievances. He was frightened by these things at first. But then he saw a righteous hand at work. When workmen became too greedy, machines were built to replace their muscles and they had to hunt new jobs. When employers became too greedy, they ran into coercive legislation. There was a force which tended strongly to right the wrongs that appeared. No millennium, as proclaimed by fiery-eyed agitators, had come. But things are better.

An economic storm known as the big depression comes; and it is terrifying. But invention is spurred which had lagged when there was plenty. And night clubs were hurt more than churches. And the extravagant hopes of ease were sobered to something more workable and stable.

And there were wars -- terrible, monstrous, world-encircling wars, each one worse than the last. And totalitarian government strides over the necks of millions -- not the communal life of some of the early Christians wherein no man called anything his own because there were values so much greater than food or raiment. This that the world has seen in our time is government imposed in great measure by force upon many unwilling people, opening the doors of human misery, amassing the greatest force of slave labor since the Roman Empire.

But the hand of God is at work. A tremendous mass of humanity has learned to read and write; and one day their reading and writing may abolish slavery; and much of their superstition has cleared. Perhaps, as the old Greek man said when Nazis first goose-stepped down the streets of his town, “This too shall pass.”

Life must be lived amidst revolution -- change. There is always new water flowing through the river bed.

But the man has seen the hand of God continuing in His creation. He has heard the voice of one who said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” [John 5: 17]. The building of the spiritual house goes on. And he is no longer afraid. He looks ahead, as do we all at the crest of a New Year, last year’s regrets swept away in thanksgiving to God for change and decay and rebirth into the “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Whatever comes of pain or of joy in this year, may we be adequate to bear it. Whatever we can do to further the purpose of Eternal Goodness, let us do it with a will.

Think, for a few moments, what may lie over the ridge of this new year for our church. We know that careful planning, and hard decisions, and planned sacrifice have gone into the past year, and years. And now we look for the drawings of a new church home to become a reality. Concrete and steel and wood and glass are on the way to taking shape as a new church home for this congregation in this community. It will not happen in a flash. We shall live for months in discomfort and inconvenience. But we can endure these, we can give sacrificially of our time and substance that the house of the Lord be built. And we are eager for it.

We can worship regularly in the beauty of holiness, inspired by dedicated singers; encouraged by the ministry of teaching preaching, counseling. It will be as splendid a year as we purpose to make it.

We can plan now how to use the fine facilities that will be ours for young people to use --- for people of every age and need.

We begin the year with an addition to our pastoral ministry; with an inspiring choir, with dedicated teachers; with conscientious boards, with high hopes and great possibilities.

Forgetting the disappointments and difficulties of the past year, let us be the church with a will in the new year.

We welcome, eagerly, those who join us now and in days to come. We commune together on this opening Sunday of the year. We dedicate ourselves to learn and to do the will of God as a church, working with Him who has said, in the vision, “Behold, I make all things new.”

So let it be. Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 3, 1965.