Every Sunday morning here at University Lutheran, we use four readings. One from the Old Testament (but not the Psalms), one from the Psalms, one from a New Testament letter, and one from a Gospel. All of those readings should usually form a cohesive theme, for example, last Sunday’s readings were mostly about talking to God (OT – Abraham bargains with God, Psalm – David talks about kings who talk to God, Gospel – Jesus teaches his disciples the Lord’s prayer). However, during the Green seasons (Epiphany and the Sundays after Pentecost), the Epistle reading goes rogue. 
Last Sunday’s Epistle reading, Colossians 2:6-19, wasn’t really about talking to God at all. Instead, it was about where our hope resides – not in our outward works or mysticism, but in the simple fact that Jesus died for our sins. This doesn’t really fit with the rest of the readings, and that can be frustrating if you’re trying to figure out what God is saying to you about your week in the readings.
The green seasons, also called “ordinary time”, are moments for us to do things a little different. Liturgically they are colored green because they are meant to be times of growth for us (while white are times of celebration and blue/purple are times of preparation). So in the green seasons, we more or less read through a New Testament epistle or at least a good chunk of one. So for example, we started reading Colossians on July 14th and will continue to have readings out of Colossians until this coming Sunday (August 4). After that we will start reading Hebrews. Since we’re reading the letters almost straight through, it is hard to make them conform to the big theme that we have in the other readings, but we figure it’s worth it to read through a book continuously.
This reminds me of a time in my life when because of two almost abutting appointments, I took to sitting down and casually reading through Hebrews. I had about 20 minutes to just sit and read, and so every week I sat and read Hebrews. It was an amazing time because I got a sense of the whole book instead of just little snippets. That’s the idea behind the “rogue reading” in the Epistles that we have during summer (Sundays after Pentecost) and just after Christmas (Epiphany). So when you hear the “rogue” reading of the Epistles this week and you’re trying to figure out what that has to do with the other readings – don’t try to hard. They’re all tied together in being Jesus’ Word for you, but that might be about it.