Chains and Open Doors

Date: Sunday, November 1, 2026

Readings: Colossians 4 | Psalm 104:1-18

Colossians 4 looks like the part of the letter where Paul clears his throat, passes along greetings, and signs off. Don’t skim it! Here is an apostle in chains asking his friends to pray that “God may open a door for our message” (Colossians 4:3). Meanwhile Epaphras is “always wrestling in prayer” for them (4:12), Luke the beloved physician stands at Paul’s side, and Onesimus, a runaway slave, is now called a “faithful and dear brother” (4:9). In Christ, the old categories of rank and status lose their grip, and belonging comes by grace as a cherished gift.

Fast-forward nearly nineteen centuries. In 1943, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in Berlin’s Tegel prison with an uncertain future. Accounts from fellow prisoners describe a man who spent his confinement comforting frightened inmates, praying with them during air raids, and writing letters that some sympathetic guards quietly smuggled out. Like Paul, he treated his cell as a posting rather than a dead end. The door God opened wasn’t the one he would have preferred, but it was a door.

That’s the quiet wonder of this chapter. Paul asks that our speech be “full of grace, seasoned with salt” (4:6), and he closes with, “Remember my chains. Grace be with you” (4:18). Chains and grace, side by side, because the Christ who holds all things together in perfect unity (1:17) entered our captivity to set us free. Whatever confines you today, God is for you, and he specializes in doors. Just realize it might not be the door you’re looking for.

Devotional Prompts:

• Paul asked for an open door rather than an escape. What “door” might God be opening inside a situation you wish would simply end?
• Epaphras wrestled in prayer for people he couldn’t be with. Who is God nudging you to carry in prayer this week?
• What would it look like for your words of grace to be “seasoned with salt”?

Prayer: Gracious Father, thank You that no chain can keep Your Word from running free. Open doors for us in places we least expect, and let our words carry Your kindness. Hold us in the grace of Jesus, in whom all things hold together. Amen.