You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Many churches don’t talk much about mission these days – that’s something for “missionaries.” But as we become more intentional about seeing ourselves as agents of Jesus Christ, we can see opportunities every day to proclaim the Realm of God and offer healing love. Jesus’ instructions to his followers as he sends them out in mission tells us a lot about how we might go out in his name in our own places and times.
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
This sending comes after a foray undertaken by the twelve, Jesus’ closest disciples. That was a successful initiative, judging from the elation both they and Jesus expressed upon their return. Now he’s scaling up the operation – seventy (or 72 in other versions) are being sent on mission. They are to go in pairs – no one walks alone in God’s realm – and they do not go to random places. They go to each place Jesus intends to go. This suggests to me that they went out as his “advance team,” to size up a community, see what opportunities there might be for proclaiming the Good News, and assess what obstacles might be set in their way.
Political advance teams arrive ahead of candidates to do that kind of reconnoitering, and to prepare the populace for a candidate’s message. They set up communications, build a grassroots operation, generate anticipation and enthusiasm for the candidate’s arrival. The prepare the ground for planting, as it were, making everything ready for a successful campaign in that place.
What if we saw our missional activities in such a light? We can assume Jesus wants to arrive at every place, every person, every heart. So what communities or people are you being assigned to prepare? We do this advance work by speaking naturally of our own experiences of love and freedom and healing through Christ. We invite people to consider learning more about him as he is revealed in the Gospels – and in our own lives, as we’re willing to tell our stories. We might even create some grassroots energy by inviting people into small groups for bible study or prayer or spiritual conversation.
Who were the “advance teams” that came into your life inviting you into a deeper relationship with Jesus? Who planted seeds in you that resulted in your coming to faith more fully and profoundly?
This wording also reminds us that we don’t create the mission. God has already designed it, and will reveal to us more explicit instructions as we go. And we do need to go, even if we don’t leave home. Many of us have a huge reach online – don’t be afraid to be your spiritual self in digital space. Find a buddy and hit the road.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-27-25 - Don't Look Back
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus was in a tough mood the day he was vetting would-be disciples. Not only did he tell folks not to run home to bury their dead ; he didn’t even want them going back to say goodbye before they threw in their lot with him: Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Okay – I get that our life as agents of God’s Realm of power and love may need to come before our other commitments. But do we have to throw away our other relationships completely? Just abandon our families?
As with everything else in the Scriptures, we have to hold this statement in tension with the other things Jesus is recorded as having said and done. I pray there is more than one pattern to becoming a disciple. If we take ourselves off the “judgment hook” this statement can generate, we’ll be better placed to find the good news in what Jesus said. We all recognize the tendency to want to look back; where do we find life in not giving in to that impulse?
For me, it comes back to this: the life of God is always forward, always ahead of us on the road. What has been is real and important and shapes where we are now, but we do not need to look back at the last place we encountered God. We are to trust that those encounters will multiply as we follow Jesus – as we spend time with him in prayer; learn from him in scripture; work with him in apostolic action. The more we move forward, the less we need to look back.
And what about those goodbyes? Don’t they need to be said? Perhaps – and maybe we are invited to trust that we will encounter those beloveds again in different ways. Maybe we don’t need to spend a lot of energy on goodbyes, because in God’s economy we remain connected in spirit to those whom we love, even if we’re not with them in body.
Earlier this week we heard from the Shirelles and U2. Today, let’s give the last word to Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger (also frighteningly young in this video) doing “Don’t Look Back.” This song is NOT about following Jesus, but let’s just focus on the chorus, on the walking and not looking back part. God will take care of what’s behind us as we look forward.
So if you just put your hand in mine,
We’re gonna leave all our troubles behind;
We gonna walk and don’t look back!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Jesus was in a tough mood the day he was vetting would-be disciples. Not only did he tell folks not to run home to bury their dead ; he didn’t even want them going back to say goodbye before they threw in their lot with him: Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Okay – I get that our life as agents of God’s Realm of power and love may need to come before our other commitments. But do we have to throw away our other relationships completely? Just abandon our families?
As with everything else in the Scriptures, we have to hold this statement in tension with the other things Jesus is recorded as having said and done. I pray there is more than one pattern to becoming a disciple. If we take ourselves off the “judgment hook” this statement can generate, we’ll be better placed to find the good news in what Jesus said. We all recognize the tendency to want to look back; where do we find life in not giving in to that impulse?
For me, it comes back to this: the life of God is always forward, always ahead of us on the road. What has been is real and important and shapes where we are now, but we do not need to look back at the last place we encountered God. We are to trust that those encounters will multiply as we follow Jesus – as we spend time with him in prayer; learn from him in scripture; work with him in apostolic action. The more we move forward, the less we need to look back.
And what about those goodbyes? Don’t they need to be said? Perhaps – and maybe we are invited to trust that we will encounter those beloveds again in different ways. Maybe we don’t need to spend a lot of energy on goodbyes, because in God’s economy we remain connected in spirit to those whom we love, even if we’re not with them in body.
Earlier this week we heard from the Shirelles and U2. Today, let’s give the last word to Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger (also frighteningly young in this video) doing “Don’t Look Back.” This song is NOT about following Jesus, but let’s just focus on the chorus, on the walking and not looking back part. God will take care of what’s behind us as we look forward.
So if you just put your hand in mine,
We’re gonna leave all our troubles behind;
We gonna walk and don’t look back!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-26-25 - The Walking Living
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Oh, man! We missed by two weeks having this gospel reading fall on Father’s Day. What fun preachers might have had dealing with Jesus’ words about wasting our time burying our fathers: To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Sound a bit harsh? Isn’t it normal, a way of honoring your father and your mother, to give them a proper funeral? What kind of child would say, “Sorry – too busy,” to such a life moment? Well, maybe Jesus would answer, “The kind of child who sees himself first as a child of God. The kind of child who knows she is my follower first, and puts every other relationship second.” Does this sound like a cult? No doubt some of the families of those who left everything to follow Jesus did think they’d joined a cult. No one knew this “cult” would last 2,000 years and turn the world upside down.
What did Jesus mean by “Let the dead bury their own dead?” He meant that those who have been born anew in the Spirit are the living, and those who operate only out of their human, natural, “fleshly” life are as good as dead. (Perhaps he would also suggest that the energy and resources we put into tending and laying to rest the bodies of our loved ones after they have ceased to inhabit them is a misplaced priority for those who are called to proclaim life…)
Jesus was always redefining family values. Over and over he taught that the company of those who believe in him is the first family for his followers. Our primary job as followers of Christ is to proclaim the kingdom of God – the realm of God-Life. In the course of doing that we live in relationships with the people around us, including our families of origin, but we are not to value them more highly than we do our families of faith. And when our biological families distract from our discipleship, or worse become active obstacles to following in the Way of Jesus, we are to put Jesus first.
What reaction does this remark of Jesus’ provoke in you? Would it make you want to turn away and not follow him? Where might we see the life in his invitation to put our families of faith first?
It’s not all or nothing – at least I hope not. As we claim the Life of God already given to us we become not the walking dead but the walking living. And as we get about the business of proclaiming that Life of God unleashed in this world, and as we experience that Life, our priorities will be quite naturally reordered. Love is love.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Oh, man! We missed by two weeks having this gospel reading fall on Father’s Day. What fun preachers might have had dealing with Jesus’ words about wasting our time burying our fathers: To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Sound a bit harsh? Isn’t it normal, a way of honoring your father and your mother, to give them a proper funeral? What kind of child would say, “Sorry – too busy,” to such a life moment? Well, maybe Jesus would answer, “The kind of child who sees himself first as a child of God. The kind of child who knows she is my follower first, and puts every other relationship second.” Does this sound like a cult? No doubt some of the families of those who left everything to follow Jesus did think they’d joined a cult. No one knew this “cult” would last 2,000 years and turn the world upside down.
What did Jesus mean by “Let the dead bury their own dead?” He meant that those who have been born anew in the Spirit are the living, and those who operate only out of their human, natural, “fleshly” life are as good as dead. (Perhaps he would also suggest that the energy and resources we put into tending and laying to rest the bodies of our loved ones after they have ceased to inhabit them is a misplaced priority for those who are called to proclaim life…)
Jesus was always redefining family values. Over and over he taught that the company of those who believe in him is the first family for his followers. Our primary job as followers of Christ is to proclaim the kingdom of God – the realm of God-Life. In the course of doing that we live in relationships with the people around us, including our families of origin, but we are not to value them more highly than we do our families of faith. And when our biological families distract from our discipleship, or worse become active obstacles to following in the Way of Jesus, we are to put Jesus first.
What reaction does this remark of Jesus’ provoke in you? Would it make you want to turn away and not follow him? Where might we see the life in his invitation to put our families of faith first?
It’s not all or nothing – at least I hope not. As we claim the Life of God already given to us we become not the walking dead but the walking living. And as we get about the business of proclaiming that Life of God unleashed in this world, and as we experience that Life, our priorities will be quite naturally reordered. Love is love.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-25-25 - Following Jesus
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Whether it is the Peggy March singing “I Will Follow Him, ”or Bono and U2 (appallingly young here) doing “I Will Follow," we have a rich soundtrack for our gospel story. When our hearts are full of love for someone, it is natural to proclaim our everlasting allegiance and intention to be with them wherever they go. Witness Dead Heads, ParrotHeads, and others who follow their favorite bands wherever they play.
So it was one day as Jesus walked with his followers toward Jerusalem. Even strangers got caught up in it: As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Jesus was saying, “You want to follow me, it comes at a cost. Things won’t be comfortable or predictable or stable. Wild creatures will have more security than you will.” We see in the gospels Jesus living a very peripatetic life, ever on the move. We hear about his being “at home in Capernaum,” but he doesn’t seem to have spent much time there.
American Christianity has not followed this “I will follow you wherever” pattern. Other than traveling evangelists (often suspect characters in books and movies...), we prefer to do our following inwardly, quietly, spiritually, staying rooted to place and community. I am a staying put type myself, and even when I move I seek security and stability. Does this compromise me as a disciple? Is it, “I will follow, as long as I know where I’m going to sleep?” Or is there a legitimate place for being rooted in community, in our neighborhoods?
Both/And, of course… God blesses us with homes and families and communities and work and all the richness of a web of relationships. And God invites us to hold these blessings lightly, to keep our focus more on the Giver than on the gifts – and to be prepared to let them go, trade them in, keep our hands open to new blessings. It can be a difficult balancing act, but it keeps us better connected to God, nimble and ready to pivot when the Spirit calls us to bring our gifts to some new thing God is doing. And God is always doing a new thing.
The lyrics to U2’s I Will Follow are in part about Bono’s loss of his mother at a young age, but there is also unmistakably religious language – “I was blind, I could not see…” “I was lost, I am found,” that suggests the band – deeply enmeshed in Christian life at the time – had broader themes in mind. Jesus invites us away from our sorrows and stuckness, away from our self-saving strategies and sources of security to walk with him through this world, seeing it through his eyes. Sometimes that’s on the move, sometimes it’s still. Always it is being open to grace.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Whether it is the Peggy March singing “I Will Follow Him, ”or Bono and U2 (appallingly young here) doing “I Will Follow," we have a rich soundtrack for our gospel story. When our hearts are full of love for someone, it is natural to proclaim our everlasting allegiance and intention to be with them wherever they go. Witness Dead Heads, ParrotHeads, and others who follow their favorite bands wherever they play.
So it was one day as Jesus walked with his followers toward Jerusalem. Even strangers got caught up in it: As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Jesus was saying, “You want to follow me, it comes at a cost. Things won’t be comfortable or predictable or stable. Wild creatures will have more security than you will.” We see in the gospels Jesus living a very peripatetic life, ever on the move. We hear about his being “at home in Capernaum,” but he doesn’t seem to have spent much time there.
American Christianity has not followed this “I will follow you wherever” pattern. Other than traveling evangelists (often suspect characters in books and movies...), we prefer to do our following inwardly, quietly, spiritually, staying rooted to place and community. I am a staying put type myself, and even when I move I seek security and stability. Does this compromise me as a disciple? Is it, “I will follow, as long as I know where I’m going to sleep?” Or is there a legitimate place for being rooted in community, in our neighborhoods?
Both/And, of course… God blesses us with homes and families and communities and work and all the richness of a web of relationships. And God invites us to hold these blessings lightly, to keep our focus more on the Giver than on the gifts – and to be prepared to let them go, trade them in, keep our hands open to new blessings. It can be a difficult balancing act, but it keeps us better connected to God, nimble and ready to pivot when the Spirit calls us to bring our gifts to some new thing God is doing. And God is always doing a new thing.
The lyrics to U2’s I Will Follow are in part about Bono’s loss of his mother at a young age, but there is also unmistakably religious language – “I was blind, I could not see…” “I was lost, I am found,” that suggests the band – deeply enmeshed in Christian life at the time – had broader themes in mind. Jesus invites us away from our sorrows and stuckness, away from our self-saving strategies and sources of security to walk with him through this world, seeing it through his eyes. Sometimes that’s on the move, sometimes it’s still. Always it is being open to grace.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-24-25 - Fire From Heaven
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Many Christians of my “brand” – mainline Protestant, mostly progressive – are horrified at the violent rhetoric we hear from conservative church circles, particularly the identification among many American evangelicals with gun culture.* The language of vengeance and violence, though present in Old Testament texts, runs counter to the Good News proclaimed and lived by Jesus Christ. Yet not even his disciples were strangers to that flame-throwing impulse:
On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for [Jesus]; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.
James and John are being hyperbolic – there are no recorded instances of fire from heaven consuming the wicked, though the prophet Elijah did a number with fire on a wet altar, after which he had 400 enemy prophets slaughtered (yeah, it’s in the book). Maybe James and John’s anti-Samaritan ire was kindled; maybe they were juiced by the power they saw in Jesus and were beginning to exercise themselves. Yet I am less interested in their blood-lust than in Jesus’ response: “Let’s move on.”
When our message or our ministry is rejected, it is tempting to get angry at the very people we hoped to bless. Such feelings are human. But when we act on them, we depart from the way of Jesus. He was clear in his instructions to his disciples when he first sent them out: If a village does not receive you, shake its dust off your feet and move on to another place. (Luke 10:1-11) How long we are to try, and when we are to go elsewhere are matters to be discerned. The spiritual reality is that God’s work never has to be forced. When we are moving with the Spirit of God on God’s mission, it flows; things come naturally, connections are made, “coincidences” abound, and fruit results.
I have been slow to learn this. Too often I try to push things or make projects happen on my own steam, ending up tired and frustrated. I’m learning to release my efforts and initiatives and blockages into God’s hand, to sit back more and watch the Spirit arrange things so that my gifts and time are most fruitfully used. This is what happens when we learn to expect blessings – and if we’re not experiencing blessing in one endeavor, see where else the Spirit is leading us.
Are there areas in your life that feel stuck or stale? Ways you have been trying to live the Gospel that don’t appear to bear fruit? Offer them to God in prayer. Ask for insight about when to persevere, and when to fold your tents and move on.
God does want us to command fire from heaven – the fire of the Holy Spirit moving through us to cleanse and make holy our hearts and the world around us. The more we invite that holy fire into our hearts, the freer we are to minister God’s grace.
*Please watch The Armor of Light for a powerful look at how one such conservative, the Rev. Rob Schenk, a leader in the pro-life movement and in conservative circles, came to see how incompatible opposition to gun safety laws was with being pro-life… it’s been on PBS, and hopefully will be again soon, or get a copy to show. It's more urgent than ever.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Many Christians of my “brand” – mainline Protestant, mostly progressive – are horrified at the violent rhetoric we hear from conservative church circles, particularly the identification among many American evangelicals with gun culture.* The language of vengeance and violence, though present in Old Testament texts, runs counter to the Good News proclaimed and lived by Jesus Christ. Yet not even his disciples were strangers to that flame-throwing impulse:
On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for [Jesus]; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.
James and John are being hyperbolic – there are no recorded instances of fire from heaven consuming the wicked, though the prophet Elijah did a number with fire on a wet altar, after which he had 400 enemy prophets slaughtered (yeah, it’s in the book). Maybe James and John’s anti-Samaritan ire was kindled; maybe they were juiced by the power they saw in Jesus and were beginning to exercise themselves. Yet I am less interested in their blood-lust than in Jesus’ response: “Let’s move on.”
When our message or our ministry is rejected, it is tempting to get angry at the very people we hoped to bless. Such feelings are human. But when we act on them, we depart from the way of Jesus. He was clear in his instructions to his disciples when he first sent them out: If a village does not receive you, shake its dust off your feet and move on to another place. (Luke 10:1-11) How long we are to try, and when we are to go elsewhere are matters to be discerned. The spiritual reality is that God’s work never has to be forced. When we are moving with the Spirit of God on God’s mission, it flows; things come naturally, connections are made, “coincidences” abound, and fruit results.
I have been slow to learn this. Too often I try to push things or make projects happen on my own steam, ending up tired and frustrated. I’m learning to release my efforts and initiatives and blockages into God’s hand, to sit back more and watch the Spirit arrange things so that my gifts and time are most fruitfully used. This is what happens when we learn to expect blessings – and if we’re not experiencing blessing in one endeavor, see where else the Spirit is leading us.
Are there areas in your life that feel stuck or stale? Ways you have been trying to live the Gospel that don’t appear to bear fruit? Offer them to God in prayer. Ask for insight about when to persevere, and when to fold your tents and move on.
God does want us to command fire from heaven – the fire of the Holy Spirit moving through us to cleanse and make holy our hearts and the world around us. The more we invite that holy fire into our hearts, the freer we are to minister God’s grace.
*Please watch The Armor of Light for a powerful look at how one such conservative, the Rev. Rob Schenk, a leader in the pro-life movement and in conservative circles, came to see how incompatible opposition to gun safety laws was with being pro-life… it’s been on PBS, and hopefully will be again soon, or get a copy to show. It's more urgent than ever.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-23-25 - Hospitality
You can listen to this reflection here.
This week’s gospel reading finds Jesus and his disciples on the road again. He is heading for Jerusalem for the last time. The roads on which he travels are not particularly friendly: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.
What’s happening here? We need to know a little about the mix of religion and politics in the region to make sense of it. Samaritans were also people of Israel – they were descendants of the Northern Kingdom in the days when North (Samaria) and South (Judea) were separate and ruled by different kings. One reason for the split was that when King David established Jerusalem as a capital, THE place where the Spirit of God had come to dwell, the leadership there sought to make Jerusalem – and the temple David’s son Solomon built – the ONLY holy place where sacrifices could be offered. All the holy places and shrines in Samaria, the northern part of Israel, were denigrated. This did not sit well with the residents and priestly class of Samaria. Gradually the feud became a schism between two branches of one family.
When Jesus’ advance team came into this Samaritan village to see if Jesus could stay there, they were rebuffed. Whatever the locals’ natural hospitality might have been like, they were not going to play host to any religious leader heading to Jerusalem. The wounds were still fresh this many centuries later (which we also see in Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman recorded in John 4).
This is so often the case when we disapprove of what someone else stands for. We may not even bother to get to know the person, rejecting her for her opinions or positions on issues. In our polarized times, some are allergic to even hearing views that they find abhorrent, calling them toxic triggers. And sometimes those views really are abhorrent. When do we listen, and when do we say, “Enough?”
Maybe a better question is: how can we be most hospitable? Is hospitality only the willingness to host people we like and agree with? Or is it being willing to let God “set a table for me in the presence of my enemies,” as the 23rd psalm puts it?
Hospitality is a good framework for how we engage the “Other,” whether that person is of a different ethnic, racial, sexual, financial or political group than us. What if we saw such encounters as the equivalent of offering water and a place to sit to a weary and parched traveler? We have different expectations of guests than we do of friends, and different expectations of ourselves as hosts. I still hope one day to launch a dinner program I would call “Eating With Strangers,” which would invite people to break bread together and find ways to speak and listen respectfully across divisive issues.
Hospitality is a spiritual practice we are invited to cultivate in all kinds of ways. It could transform our lives – and our culture – if we found ourselves practicing it with people of whom we disapprove, even if we don't like where they've been or where they're going.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This week’s gospel reading finds Jesus and his disciples on the road again. He is heading for Jerusalem for the last time. The roads on which he travels are not particularly friendly: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.
What’s happening here? We need to know a little about the mix of religion and politics in the region to make sense of it. Samaritans were also people of Israel – they were descendants of the Northern Kingdom in the days when North (Samaria) and South (Judea) were separate and ruled by different kings. One reason for the split was that when King David established Jerusalem as a capital, THE place where the Spirit of God had come to dwell, the leadership there sought to make Jerusalem – and the temple David’s son Solomon built – the ONLY holy place where sacrifices could be offered. All the holy places and shrines in Samaria, the northern part of Israel, were denigrated. This did not sit well with the residents and priestly class of Samaria. Gradually the feud became a schism between two branches of one family.
When Jesus’ advance team came into this Samaritan village to see if Jesus could stay there, they were rebuffed. Whatever the locals’ natural hospitality might have been like, they were not going to play host to any religious leader heading to Jerusalem. The wounds were still fresh this many centuries later (which we also see in Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman recorded in John 4).
This is so often the case when we disapprove of what someone else stands for. We may not even bother to get to know the person, rejecting her for her opinions or positions on issues. In our polarized times, some are allergic to even hearing views that they find abhorrent, calling them toxic triggers. And sometimes those views really are abhorrent. When do we listen, and when do we say, “Enough?”
Maybe a better question is: how can we be most hospitable? Is hospitality only the willingness to host people we like and agree with? Or is it being willing to let God “set a table for me in the presence of my enemies,” as the 23rd psalm puts it?
Hospitality is a good framework for how we engage the “Other,” whether that person is of a different ethnic, racial, sexual, financial or political group than us. What if we saw such encounters as the equivalent of offering water and a place to sit to a weary and parched traveler? We have different expectations of guests than we do of friends, and different expectations of ourselves as hosts. I still hope one day to launch a dinner program I would call “Eating With Strangers,” which would invite people to break bread together and find ways to speak and listen respectfully across divisive issues.
Hospitality is a spiritual practice we are invited to cultivate in all kinds of ways. It could transform our lives – and our culture – if we found ourselves practicing it with people of whom we disapprove, even if we don't like where they've been or where they're going.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-20-25 - Don't Follow Me
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
For a short story, our gospel tale has already had quite a few twists and unexpected turns, but there is one more in store for us. After the dramatic removal of the demons from this deranged man, after his remarkable healing and restoration to his “right mind,” there is a curious coda. The man wants to follow Jesus, and Jesus refuses him. What?
Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Through the gospels we see Jesus inviting people to “Follow me.” So often he demands they leave their homes to travel with him. Here he has a willing recruit, and he turns him away and sends him home? What’s up? It’s not surprising that this man would want to come with Jesus – he has just set him free from years of unimaginable torment from evil forces and his neighbors. Who would want to stay around people who chain you up and try to subdue you? His desire to be with Jesus is understandable. But why would Jesus deny him?
Perhaps Jesus was not ready for a Gentile disciple; I assume this citizen of the Decapolis was Gentile. Though the Gospels record several encounters between Jesus and non-Jews, these are often awkward and Jesus sometimes seems ambivalent about them. Certainly, the Jewish leaders and populace would not have accepted such a man as part of Jesus' inner circle.
But that would be a “strategic” reason. Perhaps Jesus had a missional one: he wanted this man to bear witness to what he had experienced among his own people. Like genetic cancer treatments in which a healthy cell with growth ability is implanted among cancerous tissue, to disrupt toxic growth and convert cells to health, perhaps Jesus wanted this man to seed conversion among his own people. “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” This would make him not a "disciple reject" but one of the first missionaries in the gospels.
Sometimes the mission of God calls us to leave the familiar and bring new life to places that are unknown to us. And sometimes we find our mission right in our midst, in our towns and communities, our workplaces and families, our gyms and book groups and social networks. Where is God calling you to declare how much God has done for you?
This newly healed man did just that, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. That is ALL any of us is expected to do. We do not have to persuade or convert or explain the mysteries of God – only to speak of what Jesus has done for us. I can tell you, Jesus is doing amazing things in and through our churches every day. Declare it! Tell the stories!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
For a short story, our gospel tale has already had quite a few twists and unexpected turns, but there is one more in store for us. After the dramatic removal of the demons from this deranged man, after his remarkable healing and restoration to his “right mind,” there is a curious coda. The man wants to follow Jesus, and Jesus refuses him. What?
Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Through the gospels we see Jesus inviting people to “Follow me.” So often he demands they leave their homes to travel with him. Here he has a willing recruit, and he turns him away and sends him home? What’s up? It’s not surprising that this man would want to come with Jesus – he has just set him free from years of unimaginable torment from evil forces and his neighbors. Who would want to stay around people who chain you up and try to subdue you? His desire to be with Jesus is understandable. But why would Jesus deny him?
Perhaps Jesus was not ready for a Gentile disciple; I assume this citizen of the Decapolis was Gentile. Though the Gospels record several encounters between Jesus and non-Jews, these are often awkward and Jesus sometimes seems ambivalent about them. Certainly, the Jewish leaders and populace would not have accepted such a man as part of Jesus' inner circle.
But that would be a “strategic” reason. Perhaps Jesus had a missional one: he wanted this man to bear witness to what he had experienced among his own people. Like genetic cancer treatments in which a healthy cell with growth ability is implanted among cancerous tissue, to disrupt toxic growth and convert cells to health, perhaps Jesus wanted this man to seed conversion among his own people. “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” This would make him not a "disciple reject" but one of the first missionaries in the gospels.
Sometimes the mission of God calls us to leave the familiar and bring new life to places that are unknown to us. And sometimes we find our mission right in our midst, in our towns and communities, our workplaces and families, our gyms and book groups and social networks. Where is God calling you to declare how much God has done for you?
This newly healed man did just that, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. That is ALL any of us is expected to do. We do not have to persuade or convert or explain the mysteries of God – only to speak of what Jesus has done for us. I can tell you, Jesus is doing amazing things in and through our churches every day. Declare it! Tell the stories!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-19-25 - Fear of God
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
As an animal lover, with a soft spot for pigs (though also for bacon and pork chops), I have to admit I abhor the next part of our story: Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.
Maybe Jesus, as a Jew, had little use for the value of swine. But why did the demons have to go into anything? Couldn’t he command them into the lake without the pigs? Couldn’t he command them back to hell and bind them? All I do know is that the news spread quickly. (And here comes an echo of another iconic bible story – Jesus’ birth, and sheep herders running off and telling the wondrous things they’d seen to everyone they met...)
As the news spread, the townspeople came running to see. They were amazed as well as frightened – but not so much at the destruction of the herd. What scared them to the core was the transformation in the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons.
Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
It was not the economic loss or property damage that frightened them – it was the damage to their sense of reality, this glimpse into the raw power of God as conducted by Jesus. It was having their convictions about what is possible overturned right before their very eyes that frightened the daylights out of them. It was having their conceptions about this man and his place in their community completely shattered. He was even wearing clothes! What happened?
The next thing we know, they’re asking Jesus to leave, “for they were seized with great fear.” Don’t we often want to separate ourselves from what we don’t understand, what frightens us? That is the root of so much prejudice and hatred, division and conflict.
Have you seen someone transformed by healing? People who know addicts in recovery sometimes get to see this kind of contrast, though not in the course of a single day. Those who work with wounded veterans and the mentally ill sometimes see such transformation. If we saw it instantaneously, it would scare us too.
When we find ourselves afraid of God’s power, we can talk to God about it. We can ask the Spirit to gently lead us into a greater awareness of what God can do and has done. If only those townspeople had taken this miracle as an invitation to expand their ideas of this God they did not know instead of sending Jesus away, so much more healing and transformation might have taken place. Let’s not make their mistake.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
As an animal lover, with a soft spot for pigs (though also for bacon and pork chops), I have to admit I abhor the next part of our story: Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.
Maybe Jesus, as a Jew, had little use for the value of swine. But why did the demons have to go into anything? Couldn’t he command them into the lake without the pigs? Couldn’t he command them back to hell and bind them? All I do know is that the news spread quickly. (And here comes an echo of another iconic bible story – Jesus’ birth, and sheep herders running off and telling the wondrous things they’d seen to everyone they met...)
As the news spread, the townspeople came running to see. They were amazed as well as frightened – but not so much at the destruction of the herd. What scared them to the core was the transformation in the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons.
Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
It was not the economic loss or property damage that frightened them – it was the damage to their sense of reality, this glimpse into the raw power of God as conducted by Jesus. It was having their convictions about what is possible overturned right before their very eyes that frightened the daylights out of them. It was having their conceptions about this man and his place in their community completely shattered. He was even wearing clothes! What happened?
The next thing we know, they’re asking Jesus to leave, “for they were seized with great fear.” Don’t we often want to separate ourselves from what we don’t understand, what frightens us? That is the root of so much prejudice and hatred, division and conflict.
Have you seen someone transformed by healing? People who know addicts in recovery sometimes get to see this kind of contrast, though not in the course of a single day. Those who work with wounded veterans and the mentally ill sometimes see such transformation. If we saw it instantaneously, it would scare us too.
When we find ourselves afraid of God’s power, we can talk to God about it. We can ask the Spirit to gently lead us into a greater awareness of what God can do and has done. If only those townspeople had taken this miracle as an invitation to expand their ideas of this God they did not know instead of sending Jesus away, so much more healing and transformation might have taken place. Let’s not make their mistake.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-18-25 - Demonizing
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
How many times will we need to process an eruption of gun violence in our country? The drill has grown numbingly familiar – we learn about the shooter and his motives; we honor and remember the victims; support the survivors; call for action; pledge to pray; opine on social media. As the rhetoric flies, it is very easy to demonize different elements involved, especially the perpetrators of violence and those who enable them.
That is not what Jesus would do. This week’s story, among others, shows that he had a gift for separating disease, sin and evil from a person afflicted by them. He did not confuse people with the problems they manifest. Confronted with this terrified and terrorizing man, Jesus sees what’s wrong and addresses it head on. In this case, that means dealing first with the demons oppressing the man: Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
This man’s neighbors were not so discerning. They took the human approach – they saw the problem, not the human being. They sought to control him, subdue him, ultimately to enchain and isolate him. It didn’t work – he was at the mercy of evil run rampant, beyond his control – and theirs.
Am I suggesting that people who manifest evil are not responsible? This story does not yield such a conclusion. We are not told that this man was destructive to people other than himself. But even in the case of mass murderers and hate-mongerers (and Jesus would put these on the same moral level), we do well to remember what Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Remembering that our battle is with the powers of evil – and that it has been won by Jesus Christ, who gives us his power to wield in further skirmishes – is the key to approaching evil with love. Whether we are dealing with a person bent on destruction, or someone in the grip of addiction, or simply someone who annoys the daylights out of us, we are called to separate the person from the condition they bear or the problems they bring. We are to do our best to build up the person’s spirit, weak as it may be, while working to free them from the ills that beset them.
Does anyone in your life come to mind when you think about this? Has anyone done this for you, seen you apart from what was wrong with you? Sometimes that is the key to opening hearts so healing can begin.
It has become so easy these days to demonize other people, those whose values or behaviors or actions or opinions strike us as unholy and destructive. Technically, though, only one entity in the universe can actually demonize someone, and that is the Devil, the enemy of human nature. We don’t want to be doing his work for him, do we?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
How many times will we need to process an eruption of gun violence in our country? The drill has grown numbingly familiar – we learn about the shooter and his motives; we honor and remember the victims; support the survivors; call for action; pledge to pray; opine on social media. As the rhetoric flies, it is very easy to demonize different elements involved, especially the perpetrators of violence and those who enable them.
That is not what Jesus would do. This week’s story, among others, shows that he had a gift for separating disease, sin and evil from a person afflicted by them. He did not confuse people with the problems they manifest. Confronted with this terrified and terrorizing man, Jesus sees what’s wrong and addresses it head on. In this case, that means dealing first with the demons oppressing the man: Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
This man’s neighbors were not so discerning. They took the human approach – they saw the problem, not the human being. They sought to control him, subdue him, ultimately to enchain and isolate him. It didn’t work – he was at the mercy of evil run rampant, beyond his control – and theirs.
Am I suggesting that people who manifest evil are not responsible? This story does not yield such a conclusion. We are not told that this man was destructive to people other than himself. But even in the case of mass murderers and hate-mongerers (and Jesus would put these on the same moral level), we do well to remember what Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Remembering that our battle is with the powers of evil – and that it has been won by Jesus Christ, who gives us his power to wield in further skirmishes – is the key to approaching evil with love. Whether we are dealing with a person bent on destruction, or someone in the grip of addiction, or simply someone who annoys the daylights out of us, we are called to separate the person from the condition they bear or the problems they bring. We are to do our best to build up the person’s spirit, weak as it may be, while working to free them from the ills that beset them.
Does anyone in your life come to mind when you think about this? Has anyone done this for you, seen you apart from what was wrong with you? Sometimes that is the key to opening hearts so healing can begin.
It has become so easy these days to demonize other people, those whose values or behaviors or actions or opinions strike us as unholy and destructive. Technically, though, only one entity in the universe can actually demonize someone, and that is the Devil, the enemy of human nature. We don’t want to be doing his work for him, do we?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-17-25 - Living Among the Dead
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Talk about your welcome wagon – the first person to greet Jesus and his disciples as their boat docked in Gentile territory was someone considered the “local loco.”
As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)
Each time we reread Scripture a different word or phrase might snag our attention, new echoes or resonances ring their chimes. The phrase, “he did not live in a house but in the tombs” sets off in my mind the words of the angel outside Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
This man, so beset by the demons in residence in him, had long ago ceased to live in any meaningful way. Naked, but for the times he was bound and chained by his neighbors; crazed; desperately alone; no doubt terrified and constantly barraged by the voices inside him, it is no wonder he sought the quiet and isolation of the burial ground. Perhaps he longed to join his silent companions in death.
Yet there was enough life in him to get him down to the shore that morning. There was enough “self” left in his spirit for Jesus to project his strength into. He did not belong among the dead, but among the living. Jesus is always in the business of life, and as his followers that is our calling too.
I have known people so deep in depression they were nearly catatonic, hospitalized. And I have seen Jesus bring them back to life, through prayers, visits, even my refusal to accept this end for them. I have been a conduit for Jesus’ Spirit to strengthen their spirits until they were whole enough to return to the living. I can think of two or three off the top of my head. This power is real.
What “dead places” are you aware of in your surroundings, or among your relationships? Who do you know who is "living among the dead" – emotionally or otherwise – surrounded by toxic people or ideologies, or deep in death-dealing activities? How might God be inviting you to bring life into those circumstances, to call these people back into life?
In the life of the Christ-follower, every day is Easter morning. Every day we seek the living among the living.
Talk about your welcome wagon – the first person to greet Jesus and his disciples as their boat docked in Gentile territory was someone considered the “local loco.”
As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)
Each time we reread Scripture a different word or phrase might snag our attention, new echoes or resonances ring their chimes. The phrase, “he did not live in a house but in the tombs” sets off in my mind the words of the angel outside Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”
This man, so beset by the demons in residence in him, had long ago ceased to live in any meaningful way. Naked, but for the times he was bound and chained by his neighbors; crazed; desperately alone; no doubt terrified and constantly barraged by the voices inside him, it is no wonder he sought the quiet and isolation of the burial ground. Perhaps he longed to join his silent companions in death.
Yet there was enough life in him to get him down to the shore that morning. There was enough “self” left in his spirit for Jesus to project his strength into. He did not belong among the dead, but among the living. Jesus is always in the business of life, and as his followers that is our calling too.
I have known people so deep in depression they were nearly catatonic, hospitalized. And I have seen Jesus bring them back to life, through prayers, visits, even my refusal to accept this end for them. I have been a conduit for Jesus’ Spirit to strengthen their spirits until they were whole enough to return to the living. I can think of two or three off the top of my head. This power is real.
What “dead places” are you aware of in your surroundings, or among your relationships? Who do you know who is "living among the dead" – emotionally or otherwise – surrounded by toxic people or ideologies, or deep in death-dealing activities? How might God be inviting you to bring life into those circumstances, to call these people back into life?
In the life of the Christ-follower, every day is Easter morning. Every day we seek the living among the living.
6-16-25 - The Other Side
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The life of faith always includes a call to the Other – the other side, the other perspective, the other who is a stranger – and perhaps also strange. This was certainly true for Jesus, who was pretty much always on the move, along with his disciples. In this week’s story, he takes them on a short journey to a far-away land: Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.
Before we enter this rich and multi-faceted tale, let’s look at the set-up. Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee: One day Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.”
They were leaving familiar territory and going to the “Ten Cities,” Gentile land, where dwelt foreigners, non-Jews, “others.” The other side. The land beyond. Do we hear echoes of the “other world,” that Kingdom place Jesus was always talking about? That realm sharing time and space with this one, yet completely Other, contained in no time or space as we know it; where our rules don’t apply?
We might see Jesus’ incarnation this way. He crossed to the Other Side, to this realm from that celestial home. He brought with him the practices and “rules” of that realm and invited us to see them at work in this one. He came here to make it possible for us to cross into God-Life, and to take God-Life to the “other sides” in our world.
Only three words, “the other side,” but they invite us into The Story. Anything can happen on the other side. It might be scary. It might be exciting. It might change your life, or you might change someone else’s. Indeed, the first “other” Jesus encounters is not only Gentile; he is also seriously possessed by the demonic. There is need for healing and deliverance in this land, cause for fear, cause for faith.
What if your story today started, “One day Jesus got into a boat with me and said, ‘Let’s go to the other side.’” Where might that be? Would you be happy to go? In prayer, imagine your conversation with Jesus in that boat. “Where are we going?” "Why can’t we stay here?” “What do you want me to do when we get there?” I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I believe it will be a rich way of praying. And I know Jesus will go with us wherever he asks us to go.
As I prepare to pick up and move yet again, this time to another country, north and way, way east, I am reminded that the life of God does not seem to include a lot of staying put. We settle just long enough to share the Good News and see it catch, and then we’re led to the next place or activity or relationship or initiative. And that new thing is almost always among the Other. How else can the Other become our friend?
The life of faith always includes a call to the Other – the other side, the other perspective, the other who is a stranger – and perhaps also strange. This was certainly true for Jesus, who was pretty much always on the move, along with his disciples. In this week’s story, he takes them on a short journey to a far-away land: Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.
Before we enter this rich and multi-faceted tale, let’s look at the set-up. Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee: One day Jesus got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.”
They were leaving familiar territory and going to the “Ten Cities,” Gentile land, where dwelt foreigners, non-Jews, “others.” The other side. The land beyond. Do we hear echoes of the “other world,” that Kingdom place Jesus was always talking about? That realm sharing time and space with this one, yet completely Other, contained in no time or space as we know it; where our rules don’t apply?
We might see Jesus’ incarnation this way. He crossed to the Other Side, to this realm from that celestial home. He brought with him the practices and “rules” of that realm and invited us to see them at work in this one. He came here to make it possible for us to cross into God-Life, and to take God-Life to the “other sides” in our world.
Only three words, “the other side,” but they invite us into The Story. Anything can happen on the other side. It might be scary. It might be exciting. It might change your life, or you might change someone else’s. Indeed, the first “other” Jesus encounters is not only Gentile; he is also seriously possessed by the demonic. There is need for healing and deliverance in this land, cause for fear, cause for faith.
What if your story today started, “One day Jesus got into a boat with me and said, ‘Let’s go to the other side.’” Where might that be? Would you be happy to go? In prayer, imagine your conversation with Jesus in that boat. “Where are we going?” "Why can’t we stay here?” “What do you want me to do when we get there?” I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I believe it will be a rich way of praying. And I know Jesus will go with us wherever he asks us to go.
As I prepare to pick up and move yet again, this time to another country, north and way, way east, I am reminded that the life of God does not seem to include a lot of staying put. We settle just long enough to share the Good News and see it catch, and then we’re led to the next place or activity or relationship or initiative. And that new thing is almost always among the Other. How else can the Other become our friend?
* I am happy to announce that I have been called to serve on the staff of the Cathedral Church of All Saints in Halifax, Nova Scotia, focusing on congregational life and community engagement. I move mid-July.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-13-25 - How the Love Gets In
You can listen to this reflection here.
Let’s end our week with the epistle reading appointed for Sunday, Romans 5:1-5; specifically the last line, which says: “…God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
If we wonder how the Love we worship and rely on is delivered to us, Paul clarifies that it is a by-product of the Holy Spirit, God’s most essential gift to us. The idea that this love is inside us, ours already, rather than outside to be somehow sought or obtained – or, worse, earned – is a radical reminder to us of what grace is. Grace is unmerited favor, gift without contract or condition.
There are many gifts packed into the gift of Holy Spirit – peace, power, presence; courage, compassion, contrition; healing and hope; to name but some alliterative few. All of these are contained in the supreme gift of God’s love, God’s “yes” in the face of all the world’s “no’s.” God's love is gift to us.
And God’s love is gift through us. We are the means through which God intends his love to reach those who do not yet know him, whose hearts perhaps have not been open to receiving her love or her Spirit. It’s up to us to make the introductions, to live and speak and interact with such light and love that people around us can see that love in us, and come to want it for themselves.
Do you feel the love of God in your heart today? I do believe it is there, but I also know all kinds of things in our lives and persons can block its flow: fear, insecurity, envy, resentment, sin… Our task is to release this love poured into us so that its flow into, around and through us is unimpeded. If you are aware of an obstacle to that flow, lift it in prayer and invite the Spirit to help you move or transform it.
However you feel today, take some time to be present to the Love that has been poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit. How does knowing that pool of love is there change your day, your work, your life? Where and to whom do you want it to flow next? The prayer is simple: Come, Holy Spirit.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Let’s end our week with the epistle reading appointed for Sunday, Romans 5:1-5; specifically the last line, which says: “…God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
If we wonder how the Love we worship and rely on is delivered to us, Paul clarifies that it is a by-product of the Holy Spirit, God’s most essential gift to us. The idea that this love is inside us, ours already, rather than outside to be somehow sought or obtained – or, worse, earned – is a radical reminder to us of what grace is. Grace is unmerited favor, gift without contract or condition.
There are many gifts packed into the gift of Holy Spirit – peace, power, presence; courage, compassion, contrition; healing and hope; to name but some alliterative few. All of these are contained in the supreme gift of God’s love, God’s “yes” in the face of all the world’s “no’s.” God's love is gift to us.
And God’s love is gift through us. We are the means through which God intends his love to reach those who do not yet know him, whose hearts perhaps have not been open to receiving her love or her Spirit. It’s up to us to make the introductions, to live and speak and interact with such light and love that people around us can see that love in us, and come to want it for themselves.
Do you feel the love of God in your heart today? I do believe it is there, but I also know all kinds of things in our lives and persons can block its flow: fear, insecurity, envy, resentment, sin… Our task is to release this love poured into us so that its flow into, around and through us is unimpeded. If you are aware of an obstacle to that flow, lift it in prayer and invite the Spirit to help you move or transform it.
However you feel today, take some time to be present to the Love that has been poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit. How does knowing that pool of love is there change your day, your work, your life? Where and to whom do you want it to flow next? The prayer is simple: Come, Holy Spirit.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-12-25 - The Sharing Economy
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus uses a lot of possessive pronouns when he describes the life of God, at least, the way John’s Gospel renders his words. He speaks of what is the Father’s, what is his, what the Spirit gives. And he indicates that all this richness shared by the three-personed God is also shared with us: “He [the Spirit] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
What has been declared to us? The future of God’s reign. The fullness of Life. All the key pieces of information and insight we sometimes feel we’re missing. God is not holding anything back for later – it’s already ours. It's just that we don’t have the capacity to receive the whole signal; our systems would crash.
So, does it do us any good if we have it but don't “get it?” So often we operate out of human understanding and make choices based on fear or self-protection rather than faith. Here’s what I think: a part of us does get it. All of it. Has received the Good News of Life without end, here and in the world to come, and has been set free by that Good News. As we grow spiritually, that part of us is able more and more to share this knowing with the rest of us, until the faith-receiving self is in command, and the fear-responding self has been integrated and converted. Then we look more like Jesus. We are in a sense our own first mission field.
It’s not only God who incorporates three persons in his being; perhaps we incorporate a very different kind of trinity: our true, God-given, spiritual self; our world-shaped natural self; and the energy it takes to navigate life from that dichotomy, which can take on a life of its own.
The good news about the Good News is that what belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, and what belongs to the Son has been declared to us by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who brings about our integration and conversion, as we allow her/him access. And as we receive the fullness of God-Life we share that God-Life with the people around us and within ourselves, and that feeds back into the Triune Life of God, an infinite loop. It is the original sharing economy, and it never, ever runs out.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Jesus uses a lot of possessive pronouns when he describes the life of God, at least, the way John’s Gospel renders his words. He speaks of what is the Father’s, what is his, what the Spirit gives. And he indicates that all this richness shared by the three-personed God is also shared with us: “He [the Spirit] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
What has been declared to us? The future of God’s reign. The fullness of Life. All the key pieces of information and insight we sometimes feel we’re missing. God is not holding anything back for later – it’s already ours. It's just that we don’t have the capacity to receive the whole signal; our systems would crash.
So, does it do us any good if we have it but don't “get it?” So often we operate out of human understanding and make choices based on fear or self-protection rather than faith. Here’s what I think: a part of us does get it. All of it. Has received the Good News of Life without end, here and in the world to come, and has been set free by that Good News. As we grow spiritually, that part of us is able more and more to share this knowing with the rest of us, until the faith-receiving self is in command, and the fear-responding self has been integrated and converted. Then we look more like Jesus. We are in a sense our own first mission field.
It’s not only God who incorporates three persons in his being; perhaps we incorporate a very different kind of trinity: our true, God-given, spiritual self; our world-shaped natural self; and the energy it takes to navigate life from that dichotomy, which can take on a life of its own.
The good news about the Good News is that what belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, and what belongs to the Son has been declared to us by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who brings about our integration and conversion, as we allow her/him access. And as we receive the fullness of God-Life we share that God-Life with the people around us and within ourselves, and that feeds back into the Triune Life of God, an infinite loop. It is the original sharing economy, and it never, ever runs out.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-11-25 - The Gift of Three
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Trinity Sunday often inspires questions like, “Why is God three persons? Why not four or two or eight?” To which we might answer, “It’s a holy mystery!” But we could come up with better reasons: There are three because Jesus referred to a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. No one else is mentioned.
And there are three because there are two persons in a father/son (or parent/child) relationship, and the connection – the spirit – which flows between, through, around and from them. The reason we cannot “divide” the Trinity too sharply, the reason we insist on One God in Three, is that the Spirit is the spirit of the Father and the Son. We can’t take the Spirit out of the picture any more than we can lose our shadow.
Does it matter that God is triune? What does it get us, besides a headache from trying to figure it out? I find it precious because it tells us from the get-go that God is about relationship and relatedness. God is not a concept; God is a being with capacity for giving and receiving, loving and being loved. So when we say we are made in God’s image, that’s where we begin.
In some sense, all our relationships have a triune quality – ourselves, the other, and the spirit of connection that flows between us, which we might term a third entity created by our connection. We see this with couples – we know each partner as his or her own person, say, “Mary” and “Joseph,” but we also know them as “Mary and Joseph,” whom we think of in a slightly different way as a unit than we do Mary or Joseph individually.
In the same way, there is you, and there is God, and there is “you and God,” a product of being united with Christ. All God wants from us is to help grow that relationship. That is one thing God cannot do without us. And we do not have to do it without God. Come, Holy Spirit!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Trinity Sunday often inspires questions like, “Why is God three persons? Why not four or two or eight?” To which we might answer, “It’s a holy mystery!” But we could come up with better reasons: There are three because Jesus referred to a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. No one else is mentioned.
And there are three because there are two persons in a father/son (or parent/child) relationship, and the connection – the spirit – which flows between, through, around and from them. The reason we cannot “divide” the Trinity too sharply, the reason we insist on One God in Three, is that the Spirit is the spirit of the Father and the Son. We can’t take the Spirit out of the picture any more than we can lose our shadow.
Does it matter that God is triune? What does it get us, besides a headache from trying to figure it out? I find it precious because it tells us from the get-go that God is about relationship and relatedness. God is not a concept; God is a being with capacity for giving and receiving, loving and being loved. So when we say we are made in God’s image, that’s where we begin.
In some sense, all our relationships have a triune quality – ourselves, the other, and the spirit of connection that flows between us, which we might term a third entity created by our connection. We see this with couples – we know each partner as his or her own person, say, “Mary” and “Joseph,” but we also know them as “Mary and Joseph,” whom we think of in a slightly different way as a unit than we do Mary or Joseph individually.
In the same way, there is you, and there is God, and there is “you and God,” a product of being united with Christ. All God wants from us is to help grow that relationship. That is one thing God cannot do without us. And we do not have to do it without God. Come, Holy Spirit!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-10-25 - The Holy Translator
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
If we were to set out to build a profile of the Holy Spirit, we would do well to attend closely to the things Jesus said about him before he took his leave of his disciples. We might learn, for instance, that the Holy Spirit functions as a sort of spokesperson for the Godhead, aka the Holy Trinity. Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
More than once, Jesus says that it is God the Father whose Word matters – who uttered a Word that became flesh in the Son, a Word that creates worlds and holy occasions through the Spirit. The Spirit gives voice to what the Father says – and declares what the Father purposes, “the things that are to come.”
When we hear the voice of God, then, it is the Spirit we are hearing. And when God hears our voice, it is the voice of the Spirit. “… that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words,” Paul told the Christians in Rome, adding that the Spirit intercedes for us. (Romans 8)
What a way to think of the Spirit: as a divine translator facilitating the communication between us and God. We don’t need to pray on our own, or be prophetic on our own; in fact, we cannot. The Spirit does that in us, as we invite God’s Life into our lives.
What if we too were able to cultivate that practice – not to speak on our own, but to speak only what we hear from God? How might our churches, our relationships, our lives be affected by inviting the Spirit to speak to us and through us, not speaking unless we felt it was God’s word? I wonder if I could do it for an hour, let alone a day.
We can start by being more aware of the Spirit’s function as communications intermediary, taking the thoughts we have on our wavelength, and interpreting them into the heavenly realms; and taking God’s thoughts – which are on a spectrum virtually impossible for us to comprehend – and articulating them in us. Just asking to receive the translation is a prayer I believe God will answer.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
If we were to set out to build a profile of the Holy Spirit, we would do well to attend closely to the things Jesus said about him before he took his leave of his disciples. We might learn, for instance, that the Holy Spirit functions as a sort of spokesperson for the Godhead, aka the Holy Trinity. Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
More than once, Jesus says that it is God the Father whose Word matters – who uttered a Word that became flesh in the Son, a Word that creates worlds and holy occasions through the Spirit. The Spirit gives voice to what the Father says – and declares what the Father purposes, “the things that are to come.”
When we hear the voice of God, then, it is the Spirit we are hearing. And when God hears our voice, it is the voice of the Spirit. “… that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words,” Paul told the Christians in Rome, adding that the Spirit intercedes for us. (Romans 8)
What a way to think of the Spirit: as a divine translator facilitating the communication between us and God. We don’t need to pray on our own, or be prophetic on our own; in fact, we cannot. The Spirit does that in us, as we invite God’s Life into our lives.
What if we too were able to cultivate that practice – not to speak on our own, but to speak only what we hear from God? How might our churches, our relationships, our lives be affected by inviting the Spirit to speak to us and through us, not speaking unless we felt it was God’s word? I wonder if I could do it for an hour, let alone a day.
We can start by being more aware of the Spirit’s function as communications intermediary, taking the thoughts we have on our wavelength, and interpreting them into the heavenly realms; and taking God’s thoughts – which are on a spectrum virtually impossible for us to comprehend – and articulating them in us. Just asking to receive the translation is a prayer I believe God will answer.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-9-25 - The God Squad
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
One major cause of conflict between Christianity and other monotheistic religions has been our understanding of God as One and yet also Three; our insistence that we worship the One, True and Holy God, while simultaneously claiming that this one God incorporates three distinct persons within his (their?) One-Ness.
I don’t think any theologian set out to devise a doctrine so complex and ultimately incomprehensible to our cognitive faculties. The early thinkers of the church came to this formulation through their close reading of Jesus’ teachings handed down from those who had known him. Jesus spoke of his Father, and of the Spirit, and of himself as Son, and of all of these entities as God. Wrestling through that yielded the conclusion that this one God was also three. Both/And.
So it was on Jesus’ last night in human flesh, as he tried to reinforce for his disciples all that he had taught them during his time of ministry – and remembered that he did not have to do this alone: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…”
What a relief it must have been for Jesus, coming to the end of his human mission, about to endure his suffering and death and tests of faith, to remember that he was part of a team, not a solo operator. He knew he could communicate on a human level, with words and signs and symbols – but he could not speak directly into the hearts of even his closest followers. He knew his Spirit, who would be released following his death, resurrection and ascension, would have that kind of deep access to those who loved him.
That access, as we grant it, means we have the Spirit boost too. We don’t have to grasp the truth about God’s love and mystery with our minds alone – we have the Spirit to help us. When something in the Scriptures, or about our faith as we have received it, puzzles or troubles us, we don’t have to think our way to an answer – though thinking is part of the process. We can pray, “Spirit, show me what this means. Help me understand.” We may not get enlightenment at that moment, but we will have taken the best action we can take, and can release the matter into God’s hands.
At some point, a new way of seeing that particular issue may dawn on us, and in the meantime we will have invited the Spirit of God more deeply into our hearts. That's a win/win.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
One major cause of conflict between Christianity and other monotheistic religions has been our understanding of God as One and yet also Three; our insistence that we worship the One, True and Holy God, while simultaneously claiming that this one God incorporates three distinct persons within his (their?) One-Ness.
I don’t think any theologian set out to devise a doctrine so complex and ultimately incomprehensible to our cognitive faculties. The early thinkers of the church came to this formulation through their close reading of Jesus’ teachings handed down from those who had known him. Jesus spoke of his Father, and of the Spirit, and of himself as Son, and of all of these entities as God. Wrestling through that yielded the conclusion that this one God was also three. Both/And.
So it was on Jesus’ last night in human flesh, as he tried to reinforce for his disciples all that he had taught them during his time of ministry – and remembered that he did not have to do this alone: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…”
What a relief it must have been for Jesus, coming to the end of his human mission, about to endure his suffering and death and tests of faith, to remember that he was part of a team, not a solo operator. He knew he could communicate on a human level, with words and signs and symbols – but he could not speak directly into the hearts of even his closest followers. He knew his Spirit, who would be released following his death, resurrection and ascension, would have that kind of deep access to those who loved him.
That access, as we grant it, means we have the Spirit boost too. We don’t have to grasp the truth about God’s love and mystery with our minds alone – we have the Spirit to help us. When something in the Scriptures, or about our faith as we have received it, puzzles or troubles us, we don’t have to think our way to an answer – though thinking is part of the process. We can pray, “Spirit, show me what this means. Help me understand.” We may not get enlightenment at that moment, but we will have taken the best action we can take, and can release the matter into God’s hands.
At some point, a new way of seeing that particular issue may dawn on us, and in the meantime we will have invited the Spirit of God more deeply into our hearts. That's a win/win.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-6-25 - Everybody Into the Pool
You can listen to this reflection here. The Pentecost story is here.
One amazing aspect of the Pentecost story is how the apostle Peter interprets it as he is experiencing it. When Jesus’ followers get slam-dunked by the Holy Spirit and start proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in languages they don’t know, some observers scoff, "They must be drunk on new wine.” But Peter begins to preach to the whole crowd, saying, “We’re not drunk; it’s only nine o’clock in the morning, folks! God is up to something – and it’s something God has been promising for a very long time.”
“…this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
This idea of God’s Spirit poured out on all of humanity is startling. Don’t people need to be really holy? Don’t they need to be part of the tribe? Don’t they need to correctly understand theology? Don’t they have to want to have God’s Spirit poured out upon them? All flesh? Really? Everybody?
That’s the vision the prophet Joel had spoken of old, and that’s where Peter found the scriptural basis to anchor this bizarre turn of events. It would be some years before he finally understood just how radical God’s welcome to people outside the community of Israel truly was, but even here, at the beginning, he understands that this outpouring of God-Life is not to be reserved to a chosen few. God wants to give his Spirit to everyone God has created.
So, does one have to be a Christian to receive the Holy Spirit? Not according to the story we read in Acts 10, where the Spirit comes in power upon Gentiles listening to Peter preach. I John 4 suggests we need the Spirit of Christ to recognize the Spirit of Christ. Yet there are people who don’t claim Jesus as Lord and Savior but revere his spirit, such as Muslims and many Jewish and Baha'i people. I’ve known many non-Christians who seem Spirit-filled, even manifesting gifts of the Spirit like healing. Perhaps God’s Spirit is poured out upon everyone who recognizes the power of sacrificial love. After all, the water in a pool gets everybody in it wet, no distinctions. Is the same is true of our Living Water, a term Jesus used to signify the Holy Spirit?
My prayer is that those of us who do claim Jesus as Lord and worship him might desire the filling of the Holy Spirit, so that we can more actively share that Spirit outside our communities. One of my congregations once held Pentecost worship in a downtown park. This Pentecost Sunday, what will you do to demonstrate the gifts of the Spirit outside the sanctuary? God wants everybody in this pool.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
One amazing aspect of the Pentecost story is how the apostle Peter interprets it as he is experiencing it. When Jesus’ followers get slam-dunked by the Holy Spirit and start proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in languages they don’t know, some observers scoff, "They must be drunk on new wine.” But Peter begins to preach to the whole crowd, saying, “We’re not drunk; it’s only nine o’clock in the morning, folks! God is up to something – and it’s something God has been promising for a very long time.”
“…this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
This idea of God’s Spirit poured out on all of humanity is startling. Don’t people need to be really holy? Don’t they need to be part of the tribe? Don’t they need to correctly understand theology? Don’t they have to want to have God’s Spirit poured out upon them? All flesh? Really? Everybody?
That’s the vision the prophet Joel had spoken of old, and that’s where Peter found the scriptural basis to anchor this bizarre turn of events. It would be some years before he finally understood just how radical God’s welcome to people outside the community of Israel truly was, but even here, at the beginning, he understands that this outpouring of God-Life is not to be reserved to a chosen few. God wants to give his Spirit to everyone God has created.
So, does one have to be a Christian to receive the Holy Spirit? Not according to the story we read in Acts 10, where the Spirit comes in power upon Gentiles listening to Peter preach. I John 4 suggests we need the Spirit of Christ to recognize the Spirit of Christ. Yet there are people who don’t claim Jesus as Lord and Savior but revere his spirit, such as Muslims and many Jewish and Baha'i people. I’ve known many non-Christians who seem Spirit-filled, even manifesting gifts of the Spirit like healing. Perhaps God’s Spirit is poured out upon everyone who recognizes the power of sacrificial love. After all, the water in a pool gets everybody in it wet, no distinctions. Is the same is true of our Living Water, a term Jesus used to signify the Holy Spirit?
My prayer is that those of us who do claim Jesus as Lord and worship him might desire the filling of the Holy Spirit, so that we can more actively share that Spirit outside our communities. One of my congregations once held Pentecost worship in a downtown park. This Pentecost Sunday, what will you do to demonstrate the gifts of the Spirit outside the sanctuary? God wants everybody in this pool.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-5-25 - Getting the Word Out
You can listen to this reflection here. The Pentecost story is here.
I have always struggled with French despite having studied it for much of my childhood when living in Francophone countries. My German was solid, Italian came easily, but not French. And then once in Brussels I was at a cocktail party, and had had a pretty strong drink, and was amazed to hear myself having a full, reasonably fluent conversation in French! Must have been the spirits.
It fascinates me that the primary phenomenon manifest at that first Pentecost was the supernatural ability to speak in languages the speaker had never learned. More common manifestations of the Spirit are things like tears, speaking in tongues, sensing messages from God to convey to the community (prophecy), or even something that happened at many churches in the late 20th century, waves of holy laughter seizing whole congregations. (Yes, the Holy Spirit can be wacky…) But that first time the Spirit’s presence was manifest in the ability to communicate across barriers of ethnicity and language: All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
God wants God’s word to get out. In fact, we know Jesus as the Word of God who got out, out and about, and then sent his Spirit to go where no human being could go: directly into the hearts and minds of other human beings. Yet even when we are filled with the Spirit, we don’t fully understand God-speak. We can’t, in this life. But the closer we come to God, the better we do understand God’s language.
It is as true in our human relationships. No person can fully understand another – our emotional languages are unique, even if we share a common tongue. But as two people draw closer to each other, they begin to be able to read cues and pick up signs, even mentally translate words sometimes. We learn to understand each other.
Our mission is to be translators of God’s Word to the people around us, many of whom have never heard God-speak. That means we have to know God’s Word – in the Bible, through Jesus, and however the Spirit is speaking to and through us now. And we need to be willing to speak about how the Word has been spoken into our lives. Mostly it means we need to be filled with the Spirit, who does the translating for us.
God's Word can get out, as we’re willing to hear it, and then speak it. We’ll be amazed at the languages we become fluent in once we let the Spirit do the talking through us.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
I have always struggled with French despite having studied it for much of my childhood when living in Francophone countries. My German was solid, Italian came easily, but not French. And then once in Brussels I was at a cocktail party, and had had a pretty strong drink, and was amazed to hear myself having a full, reasonably fluent conversation in French! Must have been the spirits.
It fascinates me that the primary phenomenon manifest at that first Pentecost was the supernatural ability to speak in languages the speaker had never learned. More common manifestations of the Spirit are things like tears, speaking in tongues, sensing messages from God to convey to the community (prophecy), or even something that happened at many churches in the late 20th century, waves of holy laughter seizing whole congregations. (Yes, the Holy Spirit can be wacky…) But that first time the Spirit’s presence was manifest in the ability to communicate across barriers of ethnicity and language: All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
God wants God’s word to get out. In fact, we know Jesus as the Word of God who got out, out and about, and then sent his Spirit to go where no human being could go: directly into the hearts and minds of other human beings. Yet even when we are filled with the Spirit, we don’t fully understand God-speak. We can’t, in this life. But the closer we come to God, the better we do understand God’s language.
It is as true in our human relationships. No person can fully understand another – our emotional languages are unique, even if we share a common tongue. But as two people draw closer to each other, they begin to be able to read cues and pick up signs, even mentally translate words sometimes. We learn to understand each other.
Our mission is to be translators of God’s Word to the people around us, many of whom have never heard God-speak. That means we have to know God’s Word – in the Bible, through Jesus, and however the Spirit is speaking to and through us now. And we need to be willing to speak about how the Word has been spoken into our lives. Mostly it means we need to be filled with the Spirit, who does the translating for us.
God's Word can get out, as we’re willing to hear it, and then speak it. We’ll be amazed at the languages we become fluent in once we let the Spirit do the talking through us.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-4-25 - Shake, Rattle and Roll!
You can listen to this reflection here. The Pentecost story is here.
For the rest of the week, we will explore the reading from Acts about what happened to Jesus’ followers on that Day of Pentecost. Pentecost was the Greek name for the Jewish festival of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which marked both the grain harvest and the giving of the Torah. As observant Jews, Jesus’ disciples were gathered for prayer when the Holy Spirit began to make some noise:
For the rest of the week, we will explore the reading from Acts about what happened to Jesus’ followers on that Day of Pentecost. Pentecost was the Greek name for the Jewish festival of Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which marked both the grain harvest and the giving of the Torah. As observant Jews, Jesus’ disciples were gathered for prayer when the Holy Spirit began to make some noise:
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
It must have been terrifying – the sound like a hurricane, the sight of these divided fire-like tongues appearing, one resting on each person… and then the utterance of speech in languages unknown to the speaker. But maybe they weren’t frightened at all, for we’re told they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s amazing when God acts in so definite a way.
And it’s always wonderful when the Spirit is poured out on the whole assembly - then no one thinks she has gone crazy. In my experience, though (admittedly, a fairly restrained Anglican experience), the Spirit comes more quietly and gently, inciting a sense of God’s presence and deep feeling but not necessarily a lot of noise. I have seen manifestations of tears and outbreaks of peace more often than I have felt the foundations shaking.
Which makes me wonder: does the Spirit bring only as much power as we’re willing to receive? Is our impact limited by our capacity to be Spirit-carriers? Or does the Spirit bring as much power as is needed for what God wants to accomplish on a given day? That day, God was about changing the course of history. If the rest of the New Testament is true, those newly anointed apostles so boldly and constantly proclaimed the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ that the movement they began is still rolling, if with a little less shaking and rattling.
It wouldn’t hurt to increase our capacity to hold and move with the Spirit of God. “Come, Holy Spirit” is never a wasted prayer. And if you’re not used to praying it, I commend it to you. For with the Spirit of God working through us, God continues to transform the world. Are you ready? Let's roll!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
It must have been terrifying – the sound like a hurricane, the sight of these divided fire-like tongues appearing, one resting on each person… and then the utterance of speech in languages unknown to the speaker. But maybe they weren’t frightened at all, for we’re told they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s amazing when God acts in so definite a way.
And it’s always wonderful when the Spirit is poured out on the whole assembly - then no one thinks she has gone crazy. In my experience, though (admittedly, a fairly restrained Anglican experience), the Spirit comes more quietly and gently, inciting a sense of God’s presence and deep feeling but not necessarily a lot of noise. I have seen manifestations of tears and outbreaks of peace more often than I have felt the foundations shaking.
Which makes me wonder: does the Spirit bring only as much power as we’re willing to receive? Is our impact limited by our capacity to be Spirit-carriers? Or does the Spirit bring as much power as is needed for what God wants to accomplish on a given day? That day, God was about changing the course of history. If the rest of the New Testament is true, those newly anointed apostles so boldly and constantly proclaimed the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ that the movement they began is still rolling, if with a little less shaking and rattling.
It wouldn’t hurt to increase our capacity to hold and move with the Spirit of God. “Come, Holy Spirit” is never a wasted prayer. And if you’re not used to praying it, I commend it to you. For with the Spirit of God working through us, God continues to transform the world. Are you ready? Let's roll!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-3-25 - God Speed
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
In his last words to his disciples, Jesus told them to expect a gift from his Father: the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of God. Jesus spoke about the Spirit as having a definable personality, characteristics, traits, functions. That’s one way Christians arrived at the notion of God as three distinct yet united persons. Jesus said, “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Jesus suggests his teaching and training have been partial, limited. The Holy Spirit will teach everything, reinforcing all that Jesus spoke to them. He promises to leave his peace with them, a gift he would give again when he first saw them – perhaps in this very same room? – after he rose from the dead. He invites them to let go of the sorrow and anxiety that has gripped them, to let go of fear.
How might we do that? We need to receive this gift of peace in the spiritual part of our being and let it transform our natural selves. We cannot attain it with worldly strategies; it is not a gift to be taken, but received. Perhaps that is what Jesus meant by “I do not give to you as the world gives.”
How does the world give? Capriciously, inconsistently, often conditionally. The world rewards achievement and productivity, privilege and connections. God rewards humility and faithfulness, weakness as well as strength. Above all, God seems to give as a function of relationship, to honor a relationship that already exists, not to win us over.
We pretty much know how to play by the world’s rules, some of us more successfully than others. Lasting peace, peace that stays with us even in unpeaceful circumstances, is a fruit of running our lives on God’s operating system, learning to live by radical trust rather than by self-saving strategies. Is there a concern in your life right now that you might try to approach in God’s way rather than the world’s?
When my nephew was little, he heard someone say “God speed” to someone departing, and thought it meant moving at the speed of God. I like that. Learning to live on God-speed is a transition. We choose to put that relationship above all the others that claim our hearts, to offer everything we have – and receive far more in return.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
In his last words to his disciples, Jesus told them to expect a gift from his Father: the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of God. Jesus spoke about the Spirit as having a definable personality, characteristics, traits, functions. That’s one way Christians arrived at the notion of God as three distinct yet united persons. Jesus said, “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
Jesus suggests his teaching and training have been partial, limited. The Holy Spirit will teach everything, reinforcing all that Jesus spoke to them. He promises to leave his peace with them, a gift he would give again when he first saw them – perhaps in this very same room? – after he rose from the dead. He invites them to let go of the sorrow and anxiety that has gripped them, to let go of fear.
How might we do that? We need to receive this gift of peace in the spiritual part of our being and let it transform our natural selves. We cannot attain it with worldly strategies; it is not a gift to be taken, but received. Perhaps that is what Jesus meant by “I do not give to you as the world gives.”
How does the world give? Capriciously, inconsistently, often conditionally. The world rewards achievement and productivity, privilege and connections. God rewards humility and faithfulness, weakness as well as strength. Above all, God seems to give as a function of relationship, to honor a relationship that already exists, not to win us over.
We pretty much know how to play by the world’s rules, some of us more successfully than others. Lasting peace, peace that stays with us even in unpeaceful circumstances, is a fruit of running our lives on God’s operating system, learning to live by radical trust rather than by self-saving strategies. Is there a concern in your life right now that you might try to approach in God’s way rather than the world’s?
When my nephew was little, he heard someone say “God speed” to someone departing, and thought it meant moving at the speed of God. I like that. Learning to live on God-speed is a transition. We choose to put that relationship above all the others that claim our hearts, to offer everything we have – and receive far more in return.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-2-25 - Forever
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
"I'm gonna love you for forever," that's what he used to say,
Then you found out that forever ended last Tuesday …
So sings Carolyn Arends on a great song called “Life Is Long.” Don’t we want, more than anything, a love that will never go away, never diminish, never end? That human longing makes poignant even our sweetest relationships. Knowing that our beloved will grow up and maybe away, or will one day depart this life or our life, is what puts the bitter into bittersweet.
Next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, that great day when the Holy Spirit came in power upon Jesus’ unsuspecting disciples and turned them into apostles. This great event is not reported in any of the four Gospels; they concern themselves with the Jesus-in-the-world story, which more or less concludes with his Ascension. The Pentecost account, which we might say launches the Jesus-in-us story, appears in Acts. The Gospel reading appointed for Sunday is from John, and shows us Jesus trying to explain to his followers the gift of Holy Spirit that God will send: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Is Jesus saying this great gift will come only if they keep his commandments? Is the Holy Spirit a reward for good behavior? No, I believe he is saying, “If you love me, keeping my commandments will come naturally to you. And as you live in my truth and walk in my ways, you will be open to receiving this gift the Father will send.” Jesus says this Spirit of truth is an advocate, someone who will stand by them in times of trial and equip them for ministry the way he did – only this one will not be limited by time or space. “He will be with you forever.”
The promise of a love that is forever – that fulfills our deep-seated longing. And it gets even better: we don’t have to go looking for this love, this power, this presence. Jesus said the Spirit of God will abide with us, even in us. We won’t be taken over, ala “invasion of the body snatchers," not possessed by God’s Spirit in a way that invalidates our unique selves, but we will be abided with, walked with, held close, counseled and consoled by God, right here within us. Always.
That is a gift worthy of eternity. And we already have it. How does that change how we live and love?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
"I'm gonna love you for forever," that's what he used to say,
Then you found out that forever ended last Tuesday …
So sings Carolyn Arends on a great song called “Life Is Long.” Don’t we want, more than anything, a love that will never go away, never diminish, never end? That human longing makes poignant even our sweetest relationships. Knowing that our beloved will grow up and maybe away, or will one day depart this life or our life, is what puts the bitter into bittersweet.
Next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, that great day when the Holy Spirit came in power upon Jesus’ unsuspecting disciples and turned them into apostles. This great event is not reported in any of the four Gospels; they concern themselves with the Jesus-in-the-world story, which more or less concludes with his Ascension. The Pentecost account, which we might say launches the Jesus-in-us story, appears in Acts. The Gospel reading appointed for Sunday is from John, and shows us Jesus trying to explain to his followers the gift of Holy Spirit that God will send: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Is Jesus saying this great gift will come only if they keep his commandments? Is the Holy Spirit a reward for good behavior? No, I believe he is saying, “If you love me, keeping my commandments will come naturally to you. And as you live in my truth and walk in my ways, you will be open to receiving this gift the Father will send.” Jesus says this Spirit of truth is an advocate, someone who will stand by them in times of trial and equip them for ministry the way he did – only this one will not be limited by time or space. “He will be with you forever.”
The promise of a love that is forever – that fulfills our deep-seated longing. And it gets even better: we don’t have to go looking for this love, this power, this presence. Jesus said the Spirit of God will abide with us, even in us. We won’t be taken over, ala “invasion of the body snatchers," not possessed by God’s Spirit in a way that invalidates our unique selves, but we will be abided with, walked with, held close, counseled and consoled by God, right here within us. Always.
That is a gift worthy of eternity. And we already have it. How does that change how we live and love?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-30-25 - Watch Where You're Going
You can listen to this reflection here. The Ascension reading is here.
The Ascension story, as told in Acts, always makes me chuckle as I picture the disciples “gazing up toward heaven,” watching the soles of Jesus’ feet disappear into the ether: …as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Where is our gaze directed? Some people are said to be “so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use,” meaning, presumably, they are so focused on eternity or spiritual growth that they neglect the horizontal, missional dimension of the Christian life. Such a consumer mentality can be found in those who “church shop,” seeking a spiritual buzz and comfort, but not challenge or outreach. However, we can also become so wrapped up in doing “earthly good,” we lose the spiritual basis from which we are to meet needs and make justice – not for those outcomes alone, but because provision and justice reveal God’s love to the world.
The angels’ gentle rebuke is important for us as well. We are not to be looking for Jesus in the last place we saw him, or imagining him only in “some heaven, light years away” (as the lovely hymn, “Gather Us In” puts it). For he also told his followers they would see him in the hungry and naked, the sick and incarcerated, in the bread and wine of communion, in any place the Holy Spirit is discernible. He told them to go out and bear witness to his love and power “to the ends of the earth.” You can’t walk to the ends of the earth if your gaze is turned upwards – you will soon trip and fall, or knock somebody over, neither pitfall uncommon in Christian history.
The call to a dual focus – fixing our eyes on Jesus and looking outward to the world for which he lived, died and rose again – is reflected in our dual callings to be both disciples and apostles. As disciples we grow as we invest our time and energy strengthening our relationship with Jesus. As apostles, we follow his lead, training our vision to those places he directs us to look, where he has fixed his loving gaze. One is a more contemplative activity, the other more active. Both draw us closer to Jesus and invite Jesus to increase his life in us.
What matters is that where we look is where we are going: Jesus is both our destination, and our companion on the way there. May we, like his disciples, go out and return to our base with great joy, continually blessing God.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
The Ascension story, as told in Acts, always makes me chuckle as I picture the disciples “gazing up toward heaven,” watching the soles of Jesus’ feet disappear into the ether: …as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Where is our gaze directed? Some people are said to be “so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use,” meaning, presumably, they are so focused on eternity or spiritual growth that they neglect the horizontal, missional dimension of the Christian life. Such a consumer mentality can be found in those who “church shop,” seeking a spiritual buzz and comfort, but not challenge or outreach. However, we can also become so wrapped up in doing “earthly good,” we lose the spiritual basis from which we are to meet needs and make justice – not for those outcomes alone, but because provision and justice reveal God’s love to the world.
The angels’ gentle rebuke is important for us as well. We are not to be looking for Jesus in the last place we saw him, or imagining him only in “some heaven, light years away” (as the lovely hymn, “Gather Us In” puts it). For he also told his followers they would see him in the hungry and naked, the sick and incarcerated, in the bread and wine of communion, in any place the Holy Spirit is discernible. He told them to go out and bear witness to his love and power “to the ends of the earth.” You can’t walk to the ends of the earth if your gaze is turned upwards – you will soon trip and fall, or knock somebody over, neither pitfall uncommon in Christian history.
The call to a dual focus – fixing our eyes on Jesus and looking outward to the world for which he lived, died and rose again – is reflected in our dual callings to be both disciples and apostles. As disciples we grow as we invest our time and energy strengthening our relationship with Jesus. As apostles, we follow his lead, training our vision to those places he directs us to look, where he has fixed his loving gaze. One is a more contemplative activity, the other more active. Both draw us closer to Jesus and invite Jesus to increase his life in us.
What matters is that where we look is where we are going: Jesus is both our destination, and our companion on the way there. May we, like his disciples, go out and return to our base with great joy, continually blessing God.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-29-25 - Witnesses
You can listen to this reflection here. An Ascension reading is here.
Jesus was clear with his disciples before his final departure: they were to bear witness to what they had seen and known with him, and further still, they were to bear witness to knowing him, and make him known to the people they met. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Do today's churchgoers think we’re in a witness protection program? We will bear witness to our great worship, our friendly coffee hours, our beautiful buildings, not to mention movies we’ve seen, restaurants we’ve enjoyed, children, grandchildren and pets we’re besotted with… but when it comes to talking about our faith, or tossing Jesus’ name around? Silence. "Who, me?"
If we have to bear witness by ourselves, maybe we have reason to hesitate – we may not think our stories exciting enough, our experiences extreme enough, our words eloquent enough, our knowledge extensive enough. But notice what comes first in that sentence: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” In those early weeks after the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples weren’t any better than we are. They stayed huddled up in that room, they went fishing, they prayed and wondered what the heck they were supposed to do next.
But when the Spirit came upon them at Pentecost, suddenly they were empowered in ways they couldn’t have imagined before. Peter, so quick to deny Jesus after his arrest, now risked arrest himself because he could not stop preaching the Good News.
We think we have to figure out how to be witnesses. No: we only have to be open to the Holy Spirit – invite the Spirit to fill us, empower us, equip us, embolden us. Then the stories will spill out. The “anointed appointments” will pop up in our lives. The “God-incidences” will mount up.
We are Jesus’ witnesses. It’s his life we proclaim, telling how his life has intersected with and enriched and made sense of our lives. Come, Holy Spirit! Let the witnessing begin.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Jesus was clear with his disciples before his final departure: they were to bear witness to what they had seen and known with him, and further still, they were to bear witness to knowing him, and make him known to the people they met. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Do today's churchgoers think we’re in a witness protection program? We will bear witness to our great worship, our friendly coffee hours, our beautiful buildings, not to mention movies we’ve seen, restaurants we’ve enjoyed, children, grandchildren and pets we’re besotted with… but when it comes to talking about our faith, or tossing Jesus’ name around? Silence. "Who, me?"
If we have to bear witness by ourselves, maybe we have reason to hesitate – we may not think our stories exciting enough, our experiences extreme enough, our words eloquent enough, our knowledge extensive enough. But notice what comes first in that sentence: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…” In those early weeks after the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples weren’t any better than we are. They stayed huddled up in that room, they went fishing, they prayed and wondered what the heck they were supposed to do next.
But when the Spirit came upon them at Pentecost, suddenly they were empowered in ways they couldn’t have imagined before. Peter, so quick to deny Jesus after his arrest, now risked arrest himself because he could not stop preaching the Good News.
We think we have to figure out how to be witnesses. No: we only have to be open to the Holy Spirit – invite the Spirit to fill us, empower us, equip us, embolden us. Then the stories will spill out. The “anointed appointments” will pop up in our lives. The “God-incidences” will mount up.
We are Jesus’ witnesses. It’s his life we proclaim, telling how his life has intersected with and enriched and made sense of our lives. Come, Holy Spirit! Let the witnessing begin.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-28-25 - Waiting On a Promise
You can listen to this reflection here. An Ascension reading is here.
Sometimes playwrights (which I was, once upon a time…) have a problem: how to get a character off the stage. Did God face this dilemma with Jesus? After all, he’s risen from the dead, very much alive and embodied, if somewhat differently than before. Yet this embodied Jesus needs to exit the scene – his work is done, his mission accomplished, and it’s time for the Holy Spirit to be released upon all flesh. He can’t go into the earth or wander off. There’s only one way he can go: up. "…as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight."
Nice exit! For the rest of this week we turn to the story of Jesus’ ascension, which Luke tells in more detail in Acts than he does in his Gospel. Both accounts, though, begin with Jesus’ instructions to his disciples: While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
It is put even more urgently in Luke’s gospel: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Promises are challenging – they require us to trust the person making them. They are by nature future events - they are only promises until they are fulfilled, at which time they become gifts. And we rarely know exactly when a promise will be fulfilled. It is often when we least expect it – for the disciples this one was met some ten days later, as they gathered to pray on the Jewish feast of Pentecost. And some promises come true over time.
We too have been promised the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we have already received this gift. We can feel the Spirit in prayer, in worship, in ministry. Yet we can also go through periods when we’re waiting for the Spirit’s life to be activated in and around us, for direction to appear, prompts to unfold laying out the way forward for what God has already intended to do through us. The waiting is hard!
In what areas of your life do you feel you are waiting on the Spirit? Waiting for a promise to unfold, a path to appear? Have you told God that you’re waiting? How you feel about the waiting? That doesn’t always shorten the wait, but it deepens the relationship.
The Spirit acts when the Spirit acts; our job is to wait with grace, keeping busy with what is already before us even as we wait to behold what wonders God will reveal in us next.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Sometimes playwrights (which I was, once upon a time…) have a problem: how to get a character off the stage. Did God face this dilemma with Jesus? After all, he’s risen from the dead, very much alive and embodied, if somewhat differently than before. Yet this embodied Jesus needs to exit the scene – his work is done, his mission accomplished, and it’s time for the Holy Spirit to be released upon all flesh. He can’t go into the earth or wander off. There’s only one way he can go: up. "…as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight."
Nice exit! For the rest of this week we turn to the story of Jesus’ ascension, which Luke tells in more detail in Acts than he does in his Gospel. Both accounts, though, begin with Jesus’ instructions to his disciples: While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
It is put even more urgently in Luke’s gospel: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Promises are challenging – they require us to trust the person making them. They are by nature future events - they are only promises until they are fulfilled, at which time they become gifts. And we rarely know exactly when a promise will be fulfilled. It is often when we least expect it – for the disciples this one was met some ten days later, as they gathered to pray on the Jewish feast of Pentecost. And some promises come true over time.
We too have been promised the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we have already received this gift. We can feel the Spirit in prayer, in worship, in ministry. Yet we can also go through periods when we’re waiting for the Spirit’s life to be activated in and around us, for direction to appear, prompts to unfold laying out the way forward for what God has already intended to do through us. The waiting is hard!
In what areas of your life do you feel you are waiting on the Spirit? Waiting for a promise to unfold, a path to appear? Have you told God that you’re waiting? How you feel about the waiting? That doesn’t always shorten the wait, but it deepens the relationship.
The Spirit acts when the Spirit acts; our job is to wait with grace, keeping busy with what is already before us even as we wait to behold what wonders God will reveal in us next.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-26-25 - God's Love On Board
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The great theologian Karl Barth was once asked by a reporter to sum up his life's contribution to Christian thought. This legendary intellect and author of volumes of complex theology articulating the nature of God, man, Christ, and much more, said this, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Does it really just come down to love? Jesus said so: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
In his prayer to his heavenly Father on his last night in human form, Jesus spoke of having made known the name of God to his followers, so that God’s love, with which Jesus had been loved, would reside in them – and further, that he himself would be in them. That is what we claim happens at baptism (and may happen in other times and ways; baptism is simply a guarantor): that we are united with Christ, and his spirit dwells within us forever. Already. Now.
That means we are filled with the Father’s love too. Do you feel filled with God’s love? I confess it’s not what I’m most aware of most of the time. I’m aware of being filled with energy or anxiety, peace or hope or fury or love for another. Rarely am I conscious of being a repository of God’s love, made available to the world, through me, through you.
Yet that is arguably our most important goal in the spiritual life: to become conscious, intentional conduits of that love that made the universe into a world thirsty for it. We need to be aware of our belovedness and share that gift with others. This is old news, and yet so difficult to live into.
We don’t have to find this love and ingest it – Jesus said it is already in us, on board, because he made God’s name known to his followers. And we are their descendants, apostles ourselves. Our job is to release this love into the world around us. How will we to do that today?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
The great theologian Karl Barth was once asked by a reporter to sum up his life's contribution to Christian thought. This legendary intellect and author of volumes of complex theology articulating the nature of God, man, Christ, and much more, said this, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Does it really just come down to love? Jesus said so: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
In his prayer to his heavenly Father on his last night in human form, Jesus spoke of having made known the name of God to his followers, so that God’s love, with which Jesus had been loved, would reside in them – and further, that he himself would be in them. That is what we claim happens at baptism (and may happen in other times and ways; baptism is simply a guarantor): that we are united with Christ, and his spirit dwells within us forever. Already. Now.
That means we are filled with the Father’s love too. Do you feel filled with God’s love? I confess it’s not what I’m most aware of most of the time. I’m aware of being filled with energy or anxiety, peace or hope or fury or love for another. Rarely am I conscious of being a repository of God’s love, made available to the world, through me, through you.
Yet that is arguably our most important goal in the spiritual life: to become conscious, intentional conduits of that love that made the universe into a world thirsty for it. We need to be aware of our belovedness and share that gift with others. This is old news, and yet so difficult to live into.
We don’t have to find this love and ingest it – Jesus said it is already in us, on board, because he made God’s name known to his followers. And we are their descendants, apostles ourselves. Our job is to release this love into the world around us. How will we to do that today?
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-26-25 - To Be One
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The Seventh Sunday of Easter Dilemma: Use the readings appointed for the that Sunday, or those set for Ascension Day – knowing that no one, unless their church happens to be named Ascension, attends Ascension Day services anymore? We will split the difference this week, starting with the Easter 7 gospel.
This takes us back yet again to that upper room on Jesus’ last night in earthly life. After his long discourse to his disciples, he embarks upon a lengthy prayer for them; that’s where we tune in now: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
One reason to skip this reading entirely is that it is heart-breaking to engage this prayer. Unity was Jesus’ deepest desire for his followers; almost his last wish, we might say; and it has proved an impossible standard for the church that bears his name.And one reason the world does not believe that God sent Jesus as Redeemer is that those who follow Christ so excel at division when our mission should be multiplication.
We have vastly different ways of reading and interpreting Scripture; what we think is important in worship; how we live out the calls to justice and generosity, care for the poor and the marginalized. We are divided by history, language, and culture, by conflicts both ancient and recent. Maybe we shouldn’t feel so bad about the current state of Christ’s church – his followers were locked in bitter divisions within a few years of his resurrection.
I am most convicted by this line, "on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” If we don’t speak our word, the word of grace and forgiveness and our experience of God’s overwhelming love; and if we don’t back that up by our actions; fewer and fewer will believe through us. And friends, the community of Christ-followers is spread by human contact, like a virus, a good virus, one that strengthens the immune system and promotes healthy growth and a just and secure world. We should find this as urgent a matter as Jesus did.
If we speak the words of grace and live them, and allow the Spirit to really rule our hearts and direct our actions, we will find ourselves unable to condemn our brothers and sisters, even when their words or actions are reprehensible. We will be able to pray for them and commit them to God’s hand, and keep our eyes on Jesus, and spread the message of his love. Maybe if all Christians put that first, we’d have less energy for fighting with each other. And one day we will make Jesus’ dream of unity a reality.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
The Seventh Sunday of Easter Dilemma: Use the readings appointed for the that Sunday, or those set for Ascension Day – knowing that no one, unless their church happens to be named Ascension, attends Ascension Day services anymore? We will split the difference this week, starting with the Easter 7 gospel.
This takes us back yet again to that upper room on Jesus’ last night in earthly life. After his long discourse to his disciples, he embarks upon a lengthy prayer for them; that’s where we tune in now: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
One reason to skip this reading entirely is that it is heart-breaking to engage this prayer. Unity was Jesus’ deepest desire for his followers; almost his last wish, we might say; and it has proved an impossible standard for the church that bears his name.And one reason the world does not believe that God sent Jesus as Redeemer is that those who follow Christ so excel at division when our mission should be multiplication.
We have vastly different ways of reading and interpreting Scripture; what we think is important in worship; how we live out the calls to justice and generosity, care for the poor and the marginalized. We are divided by history, language, and culture, by conflicts both ancient and recent. Maybe we shouldn’t feel so bad about the current state of Christ’s church – his followers were locked in bitter divisions within a few years of his resurrection.
I am most convicted by this line, "on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” If we don’t speak our word, the word of grace and forgiveness and our experience of God’s overwhelming love; and if we don’t back that up by our actions; fewer and fewer will believe through us. And friends, the community of Christ-followers is spread by human contact, like a virus, a good virus, one that strengthens the immune system and promotes healthy growth and a just and secure world. We should find this as urgent a matter as Jesus did.
If we speak the words of grace and live them, and allow the Spirit to really rule our hearts and direct our actions, we will find ourselves unable to condemn our brothers and sisters, even when their words or actions are reprehensible. We will be able to pray for them and commit them to God’s hand, and keep our eyes on Jesus, and spread the message of his love. Maybe if all Christians put that first, we’d have less energy for fighting with each other. And one day we will make Jesus’ dream of unity a reality.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Here are the readings for Ascension Day. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-23-25 - Healing of the Nations
You can listen to this reflection here.
We move now from the healing of persons to the healing of the nations; from the pool of healing in our Gospel story to the healing river mentioned in the end of Revelation: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
What a beautiful picture of the new heavens and the new earth, picking up on the vision of a restoring river in Ezekiel 47, which also had fruit trees on each bank, their leaves for healing. In the new vision the healing has been broadened to the healing of the nations.
We move now from the healing of persons to the healing of the nations; from the pool of healing in our Gospel story to the healing river mentioned in the end of Revelation: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
What a beautiful picture of the new heavens and the new earth, picking up on the vision of a restoring river in Ezekiel 47, which also had fruit trees on each bank, their leaves for healing. In the new vision the healing has been broadened to the healing of the nations.
This resonates with a theme in our reading from Acts as well: ...Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
Does the healing power of Christ extend to nations? There is only one way to find out. Perhaps we feel feeble in our prayers for peace and an end to brutal invasion, terror and starvation, oppression and exploitation, because the needs are so vast, the pain so entrenched. It is hard to see dramatic outcomes to such prayers. The bigger the wound, the more complex the condition, the longer it can take to heal it – but our prayers do not go unheard. Maybe through our prayers we strengthen peace-makers. Maybe our prayers influence people in authority, or grass-roots activists. Maybe circumstances change. We don’t know – we only know that the healing stream that flows through and around us is intended for the whole world.
Maybe each day we should comb the news for one name in a conflict-ridden area, one name that leaps out at us, and make it our task to pray for that person to be fully blessed.
When Paul and his companions acted on his vision and traveled to Macedonia, they found a river there, by which there was a place of prayer. And there they met a woman named Lydia, who was brought to faith in Jesus Christ through Paul’s words, and she and her whole household were baptized. No one would have expected that – but strangers now became family in faith. Who knows what fruit came of that encounter – generations of Christ-followers, perhaps.
We don’t know where the healing stream is to flow, but It is up to us to be water-carriers, bearing that water of life to every place and person in need of it. In the end, all nations will be healed, and God will reign.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Does the healing power of Christ extend to nations? There is only one way to find out. Perhaps we feel feeble in our prayers for peace and an end to brutal invasion, terror and starvation, oppression and exploitation, because the needs are so vast, the pain so entrenched. It is hard to see dramatic outcomes to such prayers. The bigger the wound, the more complex the condition, the longer it can take to heal it – but our prayers do not go unheard. Maybe through our prayers we strengthen peace-makers. Maybe our prayers influence people in authority, or grass-roots activists. Maybe circumstances change. We don’t know – we only know that the healing stream that flows through and around us is intended for the whole world.
Maybe each day we should comb the news for one name in a conflict-ridden area, one name that leaps out at us, and make it our task to pray for that person to be fully blessed.
When Paul and his companions acted on his vision and traveled to Macedonia, they found a river there, by which there was a place of prayer. And there they met a woman named Lydia, who was brought to faith in Jesus Christ through Paul’s words, and she and her whole household were baptized. No one would have expected that – but strangers now became family in faith. Who knows what fruit came of that encounter – generations of Christ-followers, perhaps.
We don’t know where the healing stream is to flow, but It is up to us to be water-carriers, bearing that water of life to every place and person in need of it. In the end, all nations will be healed, and God will reign.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-22-25 - Walk
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I was privileged to know Canon Jim Glennon, an Anglican clergyman from Australia who had an extraordinary gift and ministry of healing. We corresponded quite a bit before he died, and I invited him to lead a healing mission at my church in New York. I will never forget his clear, simple teaching about God’s healing: plant the seed of faith, in Christ; give thanks for God’s activity, even before you see it (“first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn…” he’d quote); and don’t be afraid to test it.
At that healing mission, to demonstrate his teaching, he asked if someone with severe back pain would come up for prayer, and a man did. The process by which Jim prayed, then checked in, then responded to the feedback is an incredible story in itself; it included the man’s realization that he needed to forgive the person who’d caused his injury. But after he prayed to release that, and we prayed some more, Jim asked the man how his pain was now, and he said, “It’s gone! It’s been with me for 15 years, and it’s gone!” “Well, twist around,” Jim said. “Move your back. Try it out. Get up and walk.” One of the ways we accept the healing God offers us is by moving into it.
Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
I was privileged to know Canon Jim Glennon, an Anglican clergyman from Australia who had an extraordinary gift and ministry of healing. We corresponded quite a bit before he died, and I invited him to lead a healing mission at my church in New York. I will never forget his clear, simple teaching about God’s healing: plant the seed of faith, in Christ; give thanks for God’s activity, even before you see it (“first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn…” he’d quote); and don’t be afraid to test it.
At that healing mission, to demonstrate his teaching, he asked if someone with severe back pain would come up for prayer, and a man did. The process by which Jim prayed, then checked in, then responded to the feedback is an incredible story in itself; it included the man’s realization that he needed to forgive the person who’d caused his injury. But after he prayed to release that, and we prayed some more, Jim asked the man how his pain was now, and he said, “It’s gone! It’s been with me for 15 years, and it’s gone!” “Well, twist around,” Jim said. “Move your back. Try it out. Get up and walk.” One of the ways we accept the healing God offers us is by moving into it.
Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Sometimes we pray for healing or transformation, and think God has not answered. And why do we think that? Because we haven’t moved! We’re still sitting in our dis-ease and sometimes despair and mistrust, still seeing the matter from the same angle, perhaps influenced by disappointments in the past. But as we get up and move around, we have to see it differently, for our position changes.
We can assume that God has heard our prayers, and assume that the God who loves and desires freedom and wholeness for us is indeed acting in and through us. So we give thanks even before we see the fullness of the healing we desire. We begin to walk, to move ourselves into the healing stream of God’s love and power. Maybe we limp at first; maybe we move cautiously; but we are to move toward that freedom and wholeness, our attention fixed not on our remaining symptoms but on the unwavering love of God in Jesus Christ.
God’s healing stream is that Living Water Jesus promised would well up inside us to eternal life. And God’s healing stream is that mighty river of God Life that flows around us as we move in the Spirit. If the flow is impeded by anxiety or anger or unforgiveness or unhealed trauma, we invite the Spirit to help remove those obstacles. It is remarkable how much healing can happen even as we’re getting free of some of these impediments.
Today, pray for healing in whatever area you’ve been considering this week. (Or pray with another – the faith of two is stronger than one). Believe that God desires wholeness and freedom for you, whatever that will look like. Give thanks for God's activity even before you see the fruits. And then begin to walk in faith, into healing. First the blade, then the ear, then the fullness of life!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
We can assume that God has heard our prayers, and assume that the God who loves and desires freedom and wholeness for us is indeed acting in and through us. So we give thanks even before we see the fullness of the healing we desire. We begin to walk, to move ourselves into the healing stream of God’s love and power. Maybe we limp at first; maybe we move cautiously; but we are to move toward that freedom and wholeness, our attention fixed not on our remaining symptoms but on the unwavering love of God in Jesus Christ.
God’s healing stream is that Living Water Jesus promised would well up inside us to eternal life. And God’s healing stream is that mighty river of God Life that flows around us as we move in the Spirit. If the flow is impeded by anxiety or anger or unforgiveness or unhealed trauma, we invite the Spirit to help remove those obstacles. It is remarkable how much healing can happen even as we’re getting free of some of these impediments.
Today, pray for healing in whatever area you’ve been considering this week. (Or pray with another – the faith of two is stronger than one). Believe that God desires wholeness and freedom for you, whatever that will look like. Give thanks for God's activity even before you see the fruits. And then begin to walk in faith, into healing. First the blade, then the ear, then the fullness of life!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
5-21-25 - Another Way
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I once knew someone whose life had become a living hell. So many traumas and losses had accrued, exacerbated by and exacerbating physical and mental illness, family and financial troubles, she was like a fly caught in the web of a very busy spider. Listening to her tales of woe, I didn’t know where to begin; she was sure no good outcome was possible.
Isn’t there always a good reason to lose hope? We don’t have the support we need; something came up that derailed us; we’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. The sick man in this week’s gospel story laid the blame for his continued infirmity on the other sick people around him who, he said, never let him get into the healing waters when they were stirred: The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
I love Jesus’ response: he says nothing about the pool; he doesn’t tell the man to stop feeling sorry for himself; he doesn’t advise how to compete with the other people. He simply gives a command that has the power to effect what it commands: “Stand up, take your mat, walk.”
I wonder how these words landed on this man, so sure there was only one dim possibility for reversal, if he could get into that pool at the right moment. Did he think Jesus was mocking him? Crazy? Or did he feel a sensation in his body and limbs that told him something was awakening, something had changed? Did he worry what people would think if he attempted to stand? We don’t know; we’re told only that he did stand and began to walk.
This man did not heal himself. He did not change his attitude and become more open to healing. This was Jesus’ work entirely. That’s important for us, both as we seek healing for ourselves, and as we minister to others. We don’t have to put ourselves or others into the right frame of mind. We only need to bring Jesus into the picture and believe in his presence. And if we hear a command – we may not always – we act on it.
If you were to tell Jesus in prayer today about the most “stuck” area of your life, the one about which you feel the most despair, what would it be? Try it, and try listening inwardly for a response. It might come through a word that fixes in your mind, or an image or scene, or you might find yourself sitting or walking with Jesus in your imagination. Whatever unfolds, go with it. Do you think Jesus will discuss your reasons for stuck-ness with you? Or will he just command you to be free?
In the life of God there is always another way healing can come. It may come through prayer, or medical care, or new information, or none or all of the above. We are to take the actions before us, but not get tied to them. At any moment, even thirty-eight years later, Jesus can come into our picture and set us free. He doesn’t have to untangle the spider’s web; he has only to command it in love, and the bonds fall away. As we invite him in, healing can come that much sooner.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
I once knew someone whose life had become a living hell. So many traumas and losses had accrued, exacerbated by and exacerbating physical and mental illness, family and financial troubles, she was like a fly caught in the web of a very busy spider. Listening to her tales of woe, I didn’t know where to begin; she was sure no good outcome was possible.
Isn’t there always a good reason to lose hope? We don’t have the support we need; something came up that derailed us; we’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. The sick man in this week’s gospel story laid the blame for his continued infirmity on the other sick people around him who, he said, never let him get into the healing waters when they were stirred: The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”
I love Jesus’ response: he says nothing about the pool; he doesn’t tell the man to stop feeling sorry for himself; he doesn’t advise how to compete with the other people. He simply gives a command that has the power to effect what it commands: “Stand up, take your mat, walk.”
I wonder how these words landed on this man, so sure there was only one dim possibility for reversal, if he could get into that pool at the right moment. Did he think Jesus was mocking him? Crazy? Or did he feel a sensation in his body and limbs that told him something was awakening, something had changed? Did he worry what people would think if he attempted to stand? We don’t know; we’re told only that he did stand and began to walk.
This man did not heal himself. He did not change his attitude and become more open to healing. This was Jesus’ work entirely. That’s important for us, both as we seek healing for ourselves, and as we minister to others. We don’t have to put ourselves or others into the right frame of mind. We only need to bring Jesus into the picture and believe in his presence. And if we hear a command – we may not always – we act on it.
If you were to tell Jesus in prayer today about the most “stuck” area of your life, the one about which you feel the most despair, what would it be? Try it, and try listening inwardly for a response. It might come through a word that fixes in your mind, or an image or scene, or you might find yourself sitting or walking with Jesus in your imagination. Whatever unfolds, go with it. Do you think Jesus will discuss your reasons for stuck-ness with you? Or will he just command you to be free?
In the life of God there is always another way healing can come. It may come through prayer, or medical care, or new information, or none or all of the above. We are to take the actions before us, but not get tied to them. At any moment, even thirty-eight years later, Jesus can come into our picture and set us free. He doesn’t have to untangle the spider’s web; he has only to command it in love, and the bonds fall away. As we invite him in, healing can come that much sooner.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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