Hope was born in a stable, and those the world had judged wise came to see. After witnessing this fragile new hope, the Magi “went home by a different way.” They were not the same.

My thoughts this Epiphany are filled with both the fragile new hope that I saw born at the UN climate change talks in Durban, and the bitter disappointment that calls us to go home by a new and different way.

I have seen miracles. I have seen God act powerfully, mysteriously and miraculously. I pay special attention to miracles at Christmas.

In our United Church Song of Faith we sing of how “God tends the universe, mending the broken and reconciling the estranged.” We go on to sing of the initiative that God took in the birth of Jesus, to make this mending and reconciling visible in a new way.

Leadership is what the 15,000 of us here in Durban are waiting for.

As Dr. Jesse Mugambi said yesterday, “We’re not seeing statesmanship here in Durban. We’re seeing politics and that’s not the same thing. Statesmanship means you’re prepared to give leadership even when there’s a political cost.”

My heart pounded when we sang Amazing Grace in our service on Sunday here in Durban.

“… I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.”

Soul-naked words that stir hearts everywhere. Words that transcend all boundaries because they speak to the universal human experience of being confronted with a choice between good and evil.

John Newton wrote this hymn when he needed to make a choice. He was a slave trader – wealthy, no doubt. His heart was changed when he realized that he had to choose between moral and immoral commerce.

Before leaving home for the COP17 climate talks, my climate advisor, environmental journalist Alanna Mitchell declared, “It will be like going into the epicentre of an earthquake before it happens, knowing that you might be able to do something to prevent it.”

In her opening words to the COP17 this morning Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) quoted Nelson Mandela, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”