The Photo My Old Drinking Buddy Tagged Me In RedeemedExistence daily devotional — September 26, 2026 A notification popped up on my phone Tuesday night, a tag in a photo from twelve years ago, some bar I do not even remember the name of, my arm slung around a man I used to run with back when running meant something closer to ruin than exercise. He must have been digging through an old album, feeling nostalgic about a version of himself he has apparently decided to keep. In the picture I am twenty six pounds heavier, glassy eyed, laughing at something that was probably not funny, and thirty one people had already liked it by the time I saw it. I did not comment or untag myself, though I thought about it. I just sat on the edge of my bed feeling twelve years fall away like they had never happened at all. I have been sober long enough now that most days I do not think about who I used to be. I go to work, I coach my son's baseball team, people at church know me as the guy who ...

The Boat My Old Sponsee Just Bought RedeemedExistence daily devotional, September 25, 2026 I saw the photo before I meant to. I was only checking the weather app for tomorrow's forecast when the notification banner slid across the top of my screen, a picture of Danny standing on the deck of a boat he apparently just bought outright, grinning with his arm around his wife, the caption something about God's faithfulness and hard work paying off. I sponsored that man through his first year sober. I sat across from him at a diner table more times than I can count while he cried about a marriage he thought he had already lost. And now he owns a boat, and I am still driving a car with a check engine light I have been ignoring for three months because I cannot afford to find out what it means. I am happy for Danny. I want to say that first, because it is true. But underneath the happiness, in a part of me I do not love admitting exists, something else showed up uninvited the mo...

The Question My Daughter Asked at Bedtime RedeemedExistence daily devotional, September 25, 2026 My daughter is seven, and last Tuesday night she looked up from her pillow while I was mid-prayer and asked me how I actually know God is real. Not smart-mouthed, not testing me. She wanted a real answer, the kind a seven-year-old asks when the lights are off and the day is done and there is nothing left to perform for. I opened my mouth and nothing useful came out. I gave her something about the Bible and about feeling Him in church, and she nodded the way kids nod when the answer did not really land, and I lay awake long after she fell asleep turning her question over like a stone I could not put down. I have been sober eleven years now, and most days my faith feels as settled as anything in my life. But that night reopened a door I thought I had shut for good, back to the years when I could not have answered my daughter's question either, because I did not believe it myself. ...