NOTES for Col 4:1-18
Paul singles out one very important aspect of spiritual life: constancy. And, judging by the apostle's words, this should be constant thanksgiving. To unbelieving people such a call seems somewhat artificial: the demand to thank God for everything, even for what cannot be called good for a person in any way, seems unnatural to them and often hypocritical.
Still, it must be admitted that even a believer, if he remains within traditional religious frameworks, usually gives thanks for problems, difficulties, and misfortunes, if he gives thanks at all, somewhat forcedly and rather out of religious duty. This is understandable: God does not want evil for a person and does not create it at all; every evil is the work of the hands and wills of those who either directly oppose God or ignore Him. Evil does not come from God, although sometimes He permits it to exist, and then the Bible speaks of such evil as "evil from God."
But even permission turns out not to be God's desire to create evil in order, for example, to punish someone, as the religious consciousness sees the situation, but the consequence of abusing the freedom that God gives every being He has created who possesses self-awareness and therefore the possibility of building conscious relations with Him. What, then, can a person thank God for when, it would seem, nothing good is happening in his life?
The answer may be Paul's mention of prayer, to constancy in which he calls us. Of course, if prayer is treated merely as a religious duty, as words we are obliged to say to God a certain number of times a day, it will hardly be able to help us, especially in a difficult situation. With such prayer there usually happens what believers in such a position often complain about: there are already plenty of problems, no strength and no time, and now one still has to manage to pray...
But the apostle clearly is not speaking of such prayer. He speaks of real prayer, the kind that presupposes the meeting of two wills, God's and human, in that inner space of a person where his spiritual life is born. This is quite another matter: such prayer opens another reality to a person, the reality of God's world, the reality of the Kingdom. And here there is always something for which to thank God. For here is the fullness of life, which is always with the one who prays and which no one will take from him. A fullness for which it is entirely natural to give thanks, as the apostle says.