It was mid-summer 2010 as I blankly stared at my computer screen at the office. My eyes moved lazily from one side of the screen to the next, but there was nothing to do.

The Senate had officially killed any chance of passing a climate bill. I felt only darkness and gloom. There was no hope in my mind that we could ever stop climate change now.

I had reaped to the very edges of my field, both personally and emotionally. For four years, I’d spent almost all of my time building a grassroots coalition to pass a climate bill. I travelled countless days, flying across the country from one meeting to the next, whipping up passionate college students, telling them that passing a bill was possible.

My despair was not only mourning the death of the climate bill, but mourning that our society had a chance to begin caring for creation, and we failed to take the opportunity.

Our society is stripping the vines of the earth bare – blowing up mountaintops for coal, poisoning our rivers, lakes and water for fracking, overfishing the ocean, and more. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of how we are destroying God’s creation.

During those years, I’d become terrified by the science of climate change. And the science since then has only become more dire. I won’t burden you with the details of climate science – but let’s be clear – the whole of humanity is in a speeding car, headed towards a cliff, and we must quickly steer to avoid catastrophic climate change.

California is facing its worst drought in 500 years. The UK witnessed the rainiest January in recorded history, where Oxford University has been keeping records since 1767. Our recent blast of winter brought snow and ice from South Carolina to Canada. In Sochi, Russia, temperatures have topped 60 degrees Fahrenheit at the Winter Olympics. January the fourth-warmest January worldwide since record-keeping began in 1880 according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Over the past 20 years, fossil fuel companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to confuse the science on climate change. In the 18 months during the climate debate in Congress, electric utilities and oil and gas companies spent more than $500 million in lobbying to kill climate legislation.

Those that run fossil fuel companies have lied, cheated, oppressed and robbed their neighbors, failing to uphold our covenant with creation. These same companies are pushing to develop more fossil fuel reserves, dig more coal out of the ground, and drill more oil even though scientists say we need to keep two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

But they are not the only ones to blame. In our own lives, we are also hurting God’s creation.

Driving our cars, heating and cooling our homes, flying across the globe – we are also part of the destruction taking place, by not caring for creation in our actions.

In my mind, this is a result from us all becoming a bit disconnected from God’s creation. Disconnected from what we are interdependent on, each other and the Earth. I’m right there with you. In part, my despair in the climate bill dying was also a result of my own disconnection… In my fury to pass a climate bill, I had disconnected myself from my own world around me, my neighbors, community, trying desperately to pass this bill. And in my rush to get back to my relaxation time last weekend, I took the car to the market, just 10 blocks away, instead of taking my bicycle because I was disconnected from the impact of my actions.

Our despair, and our inaction in the face of the destruction we are causing, is because we have become disconnected from our interdependence with each other, with our communities and with God’s creation.

But there is HOPE.

Joanna Macy has an incredible way to putting it:

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world — we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”

The scripture in revelations is an inspiring passage in this context. What if the “former heavens and the former earth” passing away is our opportunity to create the world as God and we envision?

The text from Revelations says: “Look! God’s Tabernacle is among humankind! God will live with them, they will be God’s people.”

We can be God’s people – whatever craziness is going on the “world” at large, we can be called be a part of creating a new earth.

On a summer afternoon in New Mexico, I was meditating on a story that one of my mentors, John Philip Newell told me. As the sun shine flickered through the trees and the wind blew in the tall grass all around me, this phrase kept coming to me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. There is still hope. There is still hope.

Here’s the story John Philip had shared earlier that morning: The Dalai Lama was being interviewed for a television news broadcast. The reporter asked “Do you have hope for the future?” The Dalai Lama broke into laughter, cameras rolling, and after that moment of absolute laughter, he looked straight into the reporter’s eyes and said “Of course I have hope for the future. The future has yet to be determined.”

I too have hope for the future. My hope lies in all of us – working to restore and protect’s God’s creation – and treating our neighbors as ourselves. We can create new ways to live that preserve our covenant with creation and uphold God’s commandments. We are all God’s people.

My hope lies in the incredible work happening in millions of unseen places. My hope lies in the children, and their ideas for a better future. And my hope lies in the people in this room, in our community, and in thousands of other communities like ours around the globe.

Each and every day our presence can help to restore God’s love for creation – and at the same time create a new earth.

So, what does it mean to act with the presence of God and for God’s creation?

How can we better live for creation and God’s children? How can our personal actions ensure that we are caring for creation? On the personal level: We can’t continue to ignore the commandments – we cannot continue to cut the grain to the edges of the field. We can begin by buying local, sustainable food. Choosing to walk or bike instead of drive. Switching to clean energy.

But those are just a couple of suggestions of actions we can take. But this personal journey we are on I’ve realized is not just about “doing things more sustainably.” It’s about living with grace, and loving our neighbors as ourselves, as we journey through this time of crisis.

Facing catastrophe calls out the best in us. Just look at any response to a natural disaster, there is so much love and caring for strangers and family and friends.

After all, we are created to be a blessing on the earth, and love all of God’s creation, including each other.

That is our personal challenge.

But for the restoration of the earth, we cannot simply act alone. We must engage our community and our culture and our society.

Restoring God’s creation in this 11th hour requires political action. Even Jesus engaged politically – most notably by confronting money changers in the temple. The culture and the institutions with power had to change.

And we are called today to do the same.

What a blessing that we get to live here and now, at this moment in human history. That we are here, in this critical moment on our planet… what an incredible blessing. The future is up to us.

The Hyattsville Mennonite Church Green group has provided a few suggestions on how to drive despair into hope and action in the bulletin, and I would love to engage many members of this community on what actions our community can take. We’ll be having a discussion and film screening in the coming weeks.

In a speech in New York City in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the [children] of God, and our brothers and sisters wait eagerly for our response.”

Those words could not ring more true now than they were 47 years ago. Let us take that despair that we feel when we think about the destruction of creation – let’s channel that deep felt emotion into personal and political action.

As we see our brothers and sisters abroad, hurting from drought or floods, let us take action to spread God’s message of caring for each other and for creation. As we see conflict caused by climate change, let us spread love, peace, and justice. As we see the impact that pollution and fossil fuels are having in our communities, let us speak truth to power. And let us be proactive in our actions, let us help make all things new.

Dr. King continued, saying “And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

Revelations says: Write this, for what I am saying is trustworthy and true.

There is still hope. There is still hope. And it is within us, for we are all God’s people.