“Our damaged pasts are transformed into hopeful futures.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – September 27, 2025
Finally, brethren, rejoice. Mend your ways, heed my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. 2 Corinthians 13:11, RSV
There’s a popular video that made its way around the internet a few years back in which a performer named Yoann Bourgeois dramatically climbs up a set of free-floating stairs, only to fall from them onto a trampoline beneath, yet managing to gracefully fly through the air, returning to the stairs to continue his ascent, yet only for a moment before the cycle repeats itself. Rising and falling. Two steps forward, one step back, eventually through great trial and struggle finding his way to the top of the stairs.
The life of faith is rarely an uninterrupted ascent up the mountain. Instead, at least in my experience, it looks a lot more like this performance. There will be seasons of great courage and boldness in faith, climbing at a rapid pace, only to then hit a wall of burnout or disillusionment, sending you quickly tumbling back down. Yet the saints of old, faithful men and women who have kept the faith until the very end, remind us that it is always possible to return and start again on the narrow path. Repentance and returning thus become the normative paths to holiness for all Christians.
I absolutely love the phrase St. Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 13, writing to a Christian community that had taken a wrong turn and found themselves in need of repentance and renewal. “Mend your ways,” he tells them. To mend is to repair and restore, to patch back together something that was torn. It is an image of rehabilitation, new life, and second chapters.
To mend something means its damaged past can become a hopeful future, and this is exactly what the Lord does with the stories of our lives. When we repent, we aren’t given a brand new story but a transformed story, where our pain and sorrow deepen our gratitude and affection for the mercy of God shown in Christ. And so, take these ancient words to heart today, and mend your ways that you may live in the love and peace of God afresh.
Prayer
Father, wherever we find ourselves today, remind us that you are always at work, mending our pasts and giving us the strength to walk afresh in the way of peace, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Application
Consider your life and if there are any beliefs, habits, or patterns of behavior that need to be mended so you can more fully live in the peace of God.
Related Reading
Psalm 51:10-12; Hosea 14:1-2; Joel 2:12-13
Worship Resource
The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir: His Mercy Is More
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