2 Timothy 3:15

Paul was a leader in the early Christian church who mentored a young pastor named Timothy. Timothy had a Jewish mother named Eunice and grandmother named Lois who raised him in the Hebrew Scriptures — what Christians call the Old Testament — from the time he was a small child. Paul is writing to Timothy from prison, near the end of his own life, and reminds him of this heritage. The "holy Scriptures" Paul refers to are those ancient texts, and he says they carry a specific power: to make a person wise "for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." The Scriptures are not just religious literature — they are a road that leads somewhere, pointing toward knowing God through Jesus.

Father, thank you for every person who placed your words in front of me before I understood what they were. Keep me from taking for granted what has quietly made me wiser. And give me the courage and the gentleness to pass it on. Amen.

Timothy probably did not think of it as a gift at the time. Bible stories from his grandmother's knee. Prayers before meals. Words he memorized before he understood them. Children almost never appreciate what is being planted in them — the seeds are invisible for years, sometimes decades. But Paul, writing from prison near the end of his own life, looks at the young man he mentored and says: what was put in you as a child is still working. It made you wise. It led you here. The invisible work of a grandmother became the foundation of a pastor. Not everyone had a Lois. Some people come to Scripture as adults, strangers to its stories and rhythms, and that door is wide open. But if you did grow up with the Bible — even imperfectly, even in a version that felt like obligation more than life — it is worth sitting with what was actually planted in you underneath the performance of it. And if you have children in your life, or young people watching you, you are doing something that matters right now, even if it looks completely invisible from where you are standing.