Pastor Mike opens with something he was carrying this time last year — a season of real depression rooted in unresolved family relationships he'd decided he was powerless to change. He'd been praying the Serenity Prayer daily and getting nowhere, until he saw why: he had the relationship filed under "things I cannot change" when it belonged under "courage to change the things I can." Wrong category, and no amount of praying was going to sort that out for him. He ties it to Jesus' instruction in Matthew 5 to be reconciled to your brother before you bring your gift to the altar, and notes that everything he was offering (to a congregation, to people in recovery) kept falling flat until he did the scary work of reaching out. Corey brings Romans 12 and the renewing of the mind, then walks through the amends instructions on pages 77 and 78, landing on the hardest part: setting aside everything you believe the other person did and looking only at your own faults. His example is his birth mother, two unanswered letters at eighteen, and the peace he found making amends in a hospital parking lot after she was gone. Paris closes it out with a good-natured disagreement about whether faith can be borrowed, and where the job of carrying the message ends.

The stone for today: I cannot move fully into peace until I am willing to face the parts of my past that still stand in the way.

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Looking back to move forward | reconciliation before the altar | the Serenity Prayer | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | sweeping my side of the street | amends and peace | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.