God’s creation is in suffering. As the United Methodist Church we cannot remain silent while God’s people and God’s planet suffer. This beautiful natural world is a loving gift from God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen. God has entrusted its care to all of us, but we have turned our backs on God and on our responsibilities. Despite intercennected threats to life and hope like poverty, environmental degradation, war and violence God’s creative work continues. Despite the ways we all contribute to these problems, God still invites each one of us to participate in the work of renewal. We must begin the work of renewing creation by being renewed in our own hearts and minds. We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it.

Advent is a time of repentance, of hope and of looking for God’s salvation to renew of all of his creation. In this Advent season the Council of Bishops encourages the whole church to focus on “God’s renewed creation” in a pastoral letter to the whole denomination. On Sunday 13^th December all Methodist Churches in the Nordic and Baltic countries are encouraged to focus on “God’s renewed creation”. This happens while leaders of the world are gathered for the Climate Summit i Copenhagen, Denmark. On Sunday 13^th December all church bells across the world will ring 350 # times to sound the alarm on the threat of global climate change in observance of International Day of Climate Action – I encourage all our churches with bells to do the same. This is also a good opportunity to take purposeful steps in decreasing the CO2 footprint of our churches, and in this way being good stewards of God’s creation.

# The 350 tolls of the church’s bells are meant to signify the parts per million that most scientists, climate experts, and government officials believe is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if global warming is not to increase with more than 2 degrees celsius. We are currently at 390, and need to take action globally to build awareness to reduce this number to below 350.