Happy New Year from your friends at Our Daily Bread.

Our devotional reading today is titled The Word and a New Year, and it was written by Amy Bouchet Pie.

Michelle in faced challenges while growing up in the Philippines, but she always loved words and found

comfort in them. Then one day, while attending university, she read the first chapter of the

Gospel of John, and her stone heart stirred. She felt like someone was saying, yes, you love words,

and guess what? There is an eternal word, one who can cut through

the darkness now and always, a word who took on flesh, a word who can love you back.

She was reading the gospel that begins with words that would have reminded John's readers of the opening of Genesis.

In the beginning, John sought to show that Jesus was not only with God at the beginning of time, but was God.

And this living word became a man and made his dwelling among us.

Further, those who receive him, believing in his name, become his

children. Micheline embraced God's love that day and was born of God. She credits God for saving

her from her family's pattern of addiction and now writes about the good news of Jesus, delighting

in sharing her words about the living word.

If we're believers in Christ, we too can share God's message and his love.

As we begin 2022, what grace-filled words can we speak this year?

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from John chapter 1, verse 1 through 14.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through Him, all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

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