Daily Devotional: The Word of God, People of the Book
This is an opinion column.
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.”
Colossians 3:16
REFLECTION
There is something that happens when you have been walking with God long enough to have a history with His Word. You start to notice it in the small moments. A lyric from an old hymn surfaces when you are grieving and it carries more weight than any comfort anyone has offered in person. A verse you memorized years ago comes to mind in the middle of a hard conversation and says exactly what you could not figure out how to say yourself. A passage you read in a hard season comes back to you in a good one, and you understand it differently now than you did then. The Word accumulates in you over time. It becomes part of how you see.
Paul’s vision in Colossians 3 is of a community where the message of Christ dwells richly, not just in individual hearts but among them, shared and spoken and sung between people who are doing life together. The Word is not only a private practice. It is a communal one. We teach each other. We remind each other. We sing the truth to each other in moments when one of us has forgotten it. The whole community becomes a carrier of something larger than any one person could hold alone.
Think about the person who first presented you with a meaningful verse at the right moment. The parent or grandparent who raised you on Scripture, so that it was simply part of the air you breathed as you grew up. The friend who texted you a passage on a day when you needed it more than they knew. The pastor whose words planted something in you that is still growing years later. The Word of God has always traveled through people. It has always been passed hand to hand.
As this week closes, the invitation is to be that kind of person for someone else. Not in a formal or forced way. Just in the natural, human way of someone who has been genuinely shaped by something and cannot help but share it. Let the Word that has dwelt in you richly flow outward. Someone in your life needs it. The Word that does not return empty often travels through an ordinary person who decided to open their mouth.
Who in your life right now most needs to receive the Word of God through you, through a conversation, a text, a note, or simply a verse spoken at the right moment, and what is stopping you from being that person for them?
PRAYER
Lord, let the message of Christ dwell in us richly, and then let it flow out of us generously. We do not want to be people who keep what we have received to ourselves. Someone around us needs the Word that has sustained us. Someone needs the verse that carried us through. Make us aware this week of who that person is and give us the courage and the sensitivity to offer it at the right moment, in the right way. Let Your Word travel through us. Amen.
