These Daily Texts consist of two readings each day. The first is the watchword. This verse is chosen by lot and always comes from the Hebrew Bible. The second text, from the New Testament, is called the teaching text, and is chosen to compliment the watchword.
The Moravian Daily Texts date back to 1728, and were first published in 1731. Relatively unknown in the United States, they are very well known and widely used in the German-speaking Protestant world. Today the Daily Texts are published in over sixty languages in 250 countries, and are read by many more people than actually belong to the numerically small Moravian Church.
Though I've been aware of them since at least the early 90's, it wasn't until I lived in Germany twenty years ago that I began to appreciate how important they were to the spirituality of German-speaking Protestants of all denominations. Though I have my own calendar of daily passages from the psalter, when (after years of using them) I began to realize my own devotions were beginning to get a bit stale, I began using using the Moravian Daily Texts at the beginning of this year. It is these texts that form the foundation of my daily posts on this weblog. I will continue using them in 2022, so I'm looking forward to receiving my copy soon (fingers crossed).
