December 1

The days are surely coming, says the Sovereign, when I will fulfill the promise I made... Jeremiah 33:14-16

God promises restoration. Often when we think of restoration we imagine making the old new again. But God wants more for us. God doesn’t want a return to the way it was. The restoration God promises is transformative. It is a restoration of dignity, relationship, community, and love. A return to our place as God’s beloved.

I find when people promise restoration or “recovery” to people navigating substance use, they sometimes mean a return to their own comfort. A return to when someone’s use wasn’t bothering them or creating worry. This sort of restoration is deeply harmful – because it leaves people unseen and alone. Their true needs continue to go unmet.

Harm reduction and abolition is the messy work of trying to find our way back to one another, which sometimes requires wading through mess and moralism. Along the way we ask ourselves hard questions like: How did we get here? What is needed now? Am I getting in the way? But at the end of that road is transformation, not only of the person we sought to support – but of ourselves as well.

Prayer

God who keeps promises,
we wait to witness your assurance of justice, righteousness, and safety made flesh in our midst.
Through our yearning, empower us to become the restoration we long for,
grounded in dignity,
reaching out in relationships,
practicing radical belonging,
and embodying transformative love.
Until those days come, we pray. Amen.

Freedom Song

Music: “Hide Not Your Light” by Trish Bruxvoort Colligan
Offered by: Dr. Sharon R. Fennema

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“[We] begin with dignity, because that is where any kind of liberation begins: with an awareness that you are worthy of so much more then whatever form your chains have taken today. For now, you are here – breathing, being, granting a gift that cannot be replicated. Your simple, miraculous, necessary existence.” – Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies

Take Action

Preparing the way with transformative restoration

Cheap restoration creates more harm in the end. Like pharmaceutical companies who paid tens of billions of dollars in settlement money and speak about it as if they are making it “right”. No amount of money can make up for thousands of lives lost to preventable overdose deaths and the racist war on drugs. Worse, across the country we see these funds being given to law enforcement agencies, for-profit treatment centers, and jails.

Look into how opioid settlement funds are being used in your community. Get involved to ensure that these funds are being used in the service of transformative restoration. Need ideas? Check out Deal Us In (https://www.healoh.org/deal-us-in) for 52 life giving options.