Forward Movement is an official, non-profit agency of the Episcopal Church whose mission is to create compelling content for Christian living. Since 1935 we have published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and books that encourage and nourish people in their lives of prayer and faith.
MONDAY, May 4 (Monnica)
Colossians 1:1-14. We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
Here Paul mentions the three cardinal Christian virtues which he more famously lists in 1 Corinthians 13:13: "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." In this sentence he hints at how the three virtues relate to each other.
It all begins with the love of God, seen in God's tender caring for his creatures and most compellingly in the person of Jesus. Faith is trust in God's love, marked by a serenity and peace that belie the nightly newscasts. When we are secure in our faith, we love "all the saints," as Paul says, even those hardest to love, in a mutual sharing and caring. Faith and love shine like beacons, rare in a world which often operates on very different principles.
It is hope, though, that underlies all. Hope is rooted in what is invisible to most eyes, in the conviction that what we see is not what we get, that what is real is more than what is factual, that this world is sprinkled throughout with signs of the beyond.
PRAY for the Diocese of Northern Mexico (Mexico)
Ps 41, 52 * 44; Wisdom 1:16-2:11, 21-24; Luke 6:1-11
Wisdom is in the Apocrypha
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A Meditation for Pentecost
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