Wishes and quotes for 2007

Is it cliche to wish for World Peace in 2007?

Because that is my first wish, or at a minimum... that the leaders of the US would realize that war is not the answer.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Related to this, I would ask that our leaders who ran on platforms of being Christians would consider this:

True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace.
- Menno Simons

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My second wish is that we as a country would turn away from hate and revenge, and re-focus our collective energy on issues of poverty and injustice to the oppressed (peacefully, of course). We have somebody important on our side to do this, so why not do it?

The Bible clearly and repeatedly teaches a fundamental point that we have often overlooked. At the crucial moments when God displayed mighty acts in history to reveal [God's] nature and will, God also intervened to liberate the poor and oppressed.
- Ronald J. Sider

and...

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
- Isaiah 58:9-10

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My third wish is that everyone does a little bit to make the world better, to help someone, to never, ever look away.

Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills, against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence. ... Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of our generation.
- Robert F. Kennedy

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Fourth and finally, I wish for happiness, good health and safety for my own family... and extend this as well to all my friends, blogger and otherwise.

Happy New Year All.