Giving thanks unto the Father . . Col. i. 12, 13. Thanksgiving is one species of prayer out of many. Prayer, in its whole extent and compass, is a comprehensive and compendious name for all kinds of approach and all kinds of address to God, and for all kinds and all degrees of communion with God.
Petition is the lowest, the most rudimentary and the most elementary of all kinds of prayer.
And it is because we so seldom rise above the rudiments and first principles of divine things that we so seldom think, and so seldom speak, about prayer in any other sense than in that of request and petition and supplication. Now it is to thanksgiving that the Apostle here invites the Colossian believers. He has prayed for them ever since the day on which he first heard of their faith and their love. It is in Paul's princely manner to establish and to illustrate his doctrines, and to enforce and to fix his counsels, by drawing upon his own experience. This is one of Paul's great ways of writing, and it is only a true and a great man who could write about himself as Paul constantly writes.