Colossians 1:8

Paul is writing a letter to a young church in the city of Colossae, in what is now western Turkey. He has never visited this church himself — it was founded by a man named Epaphras. Epaphras has since traveled to where Paul is and given him a personal report on how the community is doing. This brief verse records one detail from that report: Epaphras told Paul about the love these believers have — and specifically that it is love 'in the Spirit,' meaning it is a love produced and sustained by the Holy Spirit, not just natural human warmth or group loyalty. Even in a short verse, Paul is saying that love is the evidence Epaphras led with.

Holy Spirit, grow love in me that I couldn't manufacture on my own — the kind that surprises people and quietly points them toward you. Let someone see it this week and sense it came from somewhere deeper than me. Amen.

Imagine someone traveling hundreds of miles and, when they finally arrive, the first thing they say is: 'I have to tell you about how much these people love each other.' That's essentially what Epaphras did. He crossed a long stretch of the ancient world to find Paul, and his report wasn't about the church's impressive teaching or their numbers. It was about their love — and he was specific enough to name it as something the Holy Spirit had grown in them. Not community spirit. Not social warmth. Something cultivated from the inside out, the kind that doesn't come naturally when people are under pressure or rubbing up against each other's quirks. So here's the question worth carrying into the week: if someone who knew you well was asked to summarize you to a stranger, would love show up in the first sentence? Not perfect love — nobody's offering that. But the kind that's visibly different from the baseline, the kind that makes people slightly curious about where it comes from. That love doesn't get manufactured by trying harder. It gets tended, quietly, by staying close to the Spirit. What does that look like for you on an ordinary Tuesday?