Renewal Through Routine

August 30, 2024 by Rachel B. Hagewood

The Upper Room Disciplines has been a source of strength and comfort to readers for decades. Taking on the task of ushering its annual birth into the world is a role I don’t take lightly, yet it is one I am honored to claim as the newest editor at Upper Room Books. I have focused my life’s work on training and educating people to be deeply faithful followers of Christ. Any educational experience contains two important components: consistency and a solid curriculum. Disciplines provides both.  

Consistent, daily practice is essential to educational aspirations. Doing something over and over provides multiple opportunities for engagement, connection, and growth. Education experts say a person must encounter an idea seven different times before it becomes knowledge. The routine practice of reading and prayer provided through Disciplines offers the consistency needed to grow in God’s grace. I pray the practice will draw you closer to God. 

The other foundational component, a solid curriculum, is a path that provides a starting point from which to grow. Disciplines uses the Revised Common Lectionary to do just that. Each time you return to these scriptures, your faith is strengthened and developed in new ways. As we journey through the life of faith, we encounter scripture along a spiral path, returning to familiar words. Yet each time we come to a scripture we have studied before, we engage that scripture in a new way. The scripture itself is unchanged; it is we who are different, with a different experience, location, perspective, and understanding of God’s work in our lives.  

In the coming year, readers of Disciplines will return to the same scriptures we most recently encountered in 2022. The scriptures are the same, yet we are different. Our world is different, our understanding of God’s work in the world is different, and our understanding of our call to be God’s agents in the world is different. As we encounter anew the scriptures of this lectionary cycle, I pray this firm foundation of scripture gives readers the opportunity to grow in new directions. 

Each annual edition of Disciplines brings together a variety of voices that lead our collective conversation with scripture. I pray that readers find both the familiar and the wholly different in their words. You will hear from authors who look different than you and who live differently than you. But each person who has written—like each person who reads—is a recipient of God’s redemptive love and grace. Together, we make up a beautiful body, called by God to share God’s love with a hurting world. May the routine and the depth of The Upper Room Disciplines call us to our collaborative work to make real the kingdom of God. 


Rachel B. Hagewood is a Senior Developmental Editor for Upper Room Books.

This reflection was adapted from The Upper Room Disciplines 2025: A Book of Daily Devotions (Upper Room Books, 2024).

In this bestselling and beloved year-long devotional, you’ll find inspiring daily meditations and prayers from 52 diverse Christian thought leaders to help deepen your daily life with God. The Upper Room Disciplines 2025 is available now in regular and enlarged print. Learn more here. →

Journal Prompts

How does returning to the same scriptures each year deepen your understanding of God’s work in your life? 

How can you make room in your life for routine spiritual practices? 

How do you see yourself as part of the “beautiful body” called to share God’s love with the world? 

Share your responses with others in the comments below!


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