Colossians 2:1

Paul — a first-century missionary who helped plant the church in Colossae — writes this letter while under house arrest in Rome. He has never physically met many of the people he is addressing, yet describes his concern for them using a Greek word closer to 'agonizing' than casual worry. The church at Laodicea was a neighboring city, and Paul carries both communities on his heart simultaneously. This verse offers a rare window into Paul's inner life — not triumphant or unflappable, but straining hard on behalf of others. His prayer and concern are presented not as a feeling but as a form of labor.

Father, expand the walls of my concern. Teach me to carry people I have never met with the same weight Paul did — not a burden that crushes, but love that costs something. Make my prayers more than a list. Make them a struggle. Amen.

Most of us reserve our deepest concern for people we have sat with, eaten with, known by name. Paul breaks that rule entirely. He is losing sleep — if prisoners sleep well — over people whose faces he has never seen and whose voices he has never heard. There is something almost irrational about it, the way love sometimes is. Who are the people beyond your circle that you carry? The struggling church across town you have never visited, the community facing a crisis you only read about, the stranger whose situation lodged in your chest and wouldn't leave? Paul's example quietly dismantles the assumption that real intercession requires proximity. It requires only willingness to struggle. This week, let one name — even a face you only imagine — become the subject of the kind of prayer that costs you something.