day thirteen

Some rooms carry a quiet ache. You feel it before anyone speaks. A friendship that cooled. A hallway with careful footfalls. A team that keeps missing each other by inches. Into air like that, Jesus still whispers peace. He is not sending you to win. He is sending you to mend. Your lounge can be a small embassy. Your desk a quiet consulate. A cafe table can become a doorway home. Not pushy. Not passive. Present. Hopeful. And sometimes, just by staying with love, the air changes — a phrase lands like rain, a jaw unclenches, a room remembers how to breathe.

DAILY READINGS

14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
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DEEPER

Paul says the love of Christ compels us. God moved first. He reconciled us to Himself in Jesus and then placed the message of reconciliation in our hands. That word “entrusted” sounds like a seal pressed into wax. Credentials, given to ordinary people. Ambassadors, not spectators. Regents who carry the King’s welcome into real places with real history.

What does that welcome sound like. “Be reconciled to God.” And what does it look like. The cross is our policy. Forgiveness that costs something. Truth told with tenderness. Repair that leads to joy. Our words declare Jesus is Lord, crucified and risen. Our lives carry His mercy and His authority in small, concrete ways — the first apology, the patient question, the choice to drop the tally sheet because God is not counting theirs.

Ephesians lifts the horizon. Jesus Himself is our peace. He has pulled down the wall and created one new humanity in Himself. Reconciliation is not just two people feeling better. It is the public life of the Kingdom arriving early. This the now and the not yet. The new age has begun, though not in fullness, so we practise the future in the present. We learn to regard people by their future in Christ, not by the worst page in their file. That is regency: image-bearers reappointed, holy treasure in chipped mugs, carrying a climate of peace into ordinary rooms.

This is not theatre. It is a way of being. We listen longer than feels natural. We name harm without shaming. We forgive quickly, and when we cannot, we ask for help. Sometimes a simple sentence opens a locked room. Sometimes peace settles on a tight lounge. Sometimes reconciliation is a long walk with many small steps. Still, the work is beautiful. Think of Ezekiel’s river. Where it runs, salty water turns fresh. Let your words taste like that today.