Colossians 2:7

The apostle Paul wrote this letter to a young church in Colossae — a city in what is now Turkey — that was being tempted by trendy spiritual philosophies and human-made religious rules. He uses two images side by side: a tree with roots pushing deep into soil, and a building with walls rising story by story. Together, they describe what a maturing faith looks like — not just accumulating information about God, but being genuinely formed by him. The result of this kind of deep, upward-growing life, Paul says, isn't pride or self-congratulation. It's an overflowing thankfulness — gratitude that spills out naturally, the way a well-watered tree eventually bears fruit.

God, push my roots deeper than I am comfortable with — into the quiet, the slow, the unseen work of faith. Build something in me that can hold under real pressure. And when I can't find the right words, let the overflow be this: gratitude for what I haven't deserved and couldn't have earned. Amen.

There is a kind of tree called a strangler fig that starts as a seed dropped high in the forest canopy. It sends roots downward, year by year, quietly surrounding and eventually outlasting the tree it clings to. Paul uses the image of roots for a reason — roots are invisible work. Nobody photographs them. They grow in the dark, in resistance, in silence. But they are what keep you standing when everything above ground gets shaken. What Paul is describing is a faith that does its most important work underground. The verse ends where you might not expect it: not with achievement, not with certainty, but with thankfulness. Which suggests that one of the most reliable signs that you are actually growing in faith is that you are becoming more grateful — not more proud of how much you know, but more astonished by how much you have been given. If your faith has been making you more critical, more anxious, or more comparative lately, it may be worth asking honestly whether your roots are reaching toward him, or toward something else entirely.