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This daily post is designed to help you live into our New Room Society covenant of practicing daily prayer together. Below is this week’s theme and daily practice.
Week 28: Restoration
Returned to original condition and improved beyond measure; God goes above and beyond to bring all creation into perfect love…
“What I absolutely want is to suggest that before it’s anything else, redemption is God mending the bicycle of our souls; God bringing out the puncture repair kit, re-inflating the tires, taking off the rust, making us roadworthy once more. Not so that we can take flight into ecstasy, but so that we can do the next needful mile of our lives.” Francis Spufford
Throughout the lives of the people called by God, our Maker has rained down blessing and made up for the deep losses sustained by the called and chosen community, giving us more than we’ve ever had before.
God’s restoration is not based on merit but on grace, and reflects an abundance that is hard to make sense of, in the world’s terms.
There are many words to describe this process and gift among the people of God’s choosing:
Reconciliation, redemption, restoration.
Being brought back together, being saved, being made new.
Each of these acts of God are subtly different, but they are all connected. These words — these acts of love — are about healing, wholeness, and the ways that God refuses to let go of us, no matter how wayward we’ve been.
This week, you’re invited to live out God’s restoration: in yourself, in others, and in the world around you.
Sunday: Means of Measure
“Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.” Luke 6:38, New American Standard Bible (NASB)
You can pour a flour into a measuring cup until you have a certain amount, say one cup. But if you press that flour down, then shake and tap it down a bit more, then keep pouring in flour until it spills over the edge… That’s the kind of life and love measure God calls us to.
Find a way this week to give something (service, finances, listening, presence, engagement, praise) at a higher rate of measure than is expected.