The Heritage of the Daily Texts

"Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." Colossian 3:16-17.

Bible texts selected annually by the Moravian Church are shared worldwide since 1731. The Daily Texts are translated into English by the Moravian Church in America. This edition of the Daily Texts is offered as a means to begin a personal journey of spiritual discovery and growth under the Word of God. It is an invitation to become part of a movement of listening to God’s Word that is 267 years old! It involves a simple, daily practice of hearing God’s promises for us. We begin our travels through prayer and contemplation of the scriptures, and then witness the Lord’s power to move in our lives.

The tradition of the Daily Texts began in 1722 when Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) offered land and protection to refugees from Bohemia and Moravia. The settlement established was called Herrnhut, meaning under the "Watch of the Lord". The devout community held morning and evening devotions, consciously placing their lives in the context of God’s Word. On May 3, 1728, during the evening service, Count Zinzendorf gave the congregation a Losung – "watchword." This developed into an oral tradition of having a daily watchword for the community, shared from home to home by one or more congregation members. Eventually, Zinzendorf compiled 365 watchwords for a year and the first edition of Losungen was published in 1731.

By 1812, after Count Zinzendorf had died,  the Moravian Chruch established that all watchwords would be drawn by lot from a selection of around 2000 suitable Old Testament texts. The watchword represents either a promise, and encouragement, sometimes and admonition or a word of comfort. The selection process is a devout one; for each watchword is prayed over before being chosen from the collection of verses. In current times, with such a proliferation of lotteries, perhaps we can delight in the notion of having this special lottery where everyone playing, wins each day with a promise of God selected for them! Some years later, the Moravian Church began to include an accompanying "doctrinal" text relating in theme to the daily watchword. These doctrinal texts are now selected solely from the New Testament, to complement and illuminate the daily watchword.

In 1732, when the first Moravian "messengers" left for overseas mission work, they carried a copy of the Daily Texts with them. This book naturally connected the messengers with the members of their home congregations, who were reflecting on the same scripture passages.  From these humble beginnings, the Daily Texts has become one of the most widely read daily devotional guides in the world, with readership far surpassing the membership of the Moravian Church, at 700,000. The press run in Germany alone is over one million copies; and the Daily Texts is published in forty-one languages and dialects. It forms an invisible bond between Christians on all continents, crossing confessional, language and political barriers, and in its quiet way performs a truly ecumenical service for the whole of Christendom.