The month of December has always been a liminal space for me. While our culture is winding down the year – with businesses seeking to finish in the black, news organizations recapping their best stories, and winter finally getting here (maybe?) – the Church is already starting a new liturgical year, looking toward what God is doing (historically, currently, and forthcoming). This newsletter is just such an offering, reflecting on past, present, and future activities around creation care and justice. It is also an invitation to experience this season of Christ coming into our broken world with a promise of healing and a way for us all to be part of this divine plan.

Sometimes, it’s easy for us to get discouraged at the slow process of creation justice or the forces arrayed against this life-support system we call Earth. But as you read again the stories of the first Christmas, pay special attention to how all of creation is involved in receiving the Son of God and declaring that a new day is arriving for the human and more-than-human beings whom God loves. The world may still be filled with evil and destruction, but that is not the end of the story.

Now is the time to prepare our hearts and minds for a new calendar year filled with challenges and opportunities as we work to bring about God’s Kin-dom on Earth as it is in heaven. Just as Mary and Joseph, shepherds and magi, Elizabeth, Zechariah, and cousin John, Simeon and Anna had their roles to play in the great unfolding of the Incarnation, so too we have our roles to play in the unfolding of Christ living through us.

For God loved the cosmos so much, that God sent God’s Son whose Spirit now lives in us. And as the First Nations Version conveys John 3:16b: “All who trust in him and his way will not come to a bad end but will have the life of the world to come that never fades away, full of beauty and harmony.” Peace and love to you this Advent-Christmas-Epiphany Season.

Rev. Jonathan Brake,
United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries
Environmental Sustainability Program Manager,
especially focused on EarthKeepers