January 9, 2025 // Thursday after Epiphany

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Luke 4:14-22

Reflect on the Word //

I walked into the chapel that morning so drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I was trying so hard to give out of an empty cup this season. So, like the other mornings that week, I came in with heavy eyelids and a heart that just kept asking: How on on earth am I going to have the strength to give today? As our team prayed out loud that morning to care for the poor and weak around us, I heard the Lord say to me: You are the poor I am talking about. 

In the midst of caring for the poor around me, I had lost sight that He wanted to come to my own poor heart as well. More than bringing the Gospel to students, leading Bible studies, making killer spreadsheets for the team, or leading incredible retreats, He wanted to bring me the Good News first. It is in this place and this place only that we can give to others. First, by receiving the Gospel in our own poverty, and then in great joy and fullness bringing the Good News to all others. 

The glory of Jesus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy is in Him embracing that he has been anointed “to bring glad tidings to the poor” (Luke 4:18-20). His priority is to restore our places of poverty. He wants to bring each and every single one of us the joyful and rich Good News of the Gospel. What an unbelievable joy to know that we do not graduate from being poor, but to know that it is precisely in our poverty that Christ comes to bring His goodness, His strength, His anointing, and His love. 

I have no doubt we will all be asked to bring the “glad tidings” of the Gospel to the poor in our vocations as spouses, mothers, daughters, sisters, teachers, leaders, or simply as good friends. But we cannot forget that we must first let the Lord bring the Good News to the poverty in our own hearts. This is His great joy and what He has been anointed from the beginning of time to do. 

Relate to the Lord // Reread the Gospel today. What poverty in your heart do you need Jesus to touch?