You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Should it surprise us that Jesus could cause vats of water to become wine of the finest order? No more than that he could walk on water or speak palsied limbs into wholeness. The One who made the molecules that we call matter can order and reorder them as s/he likes.
When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
This was the first BIG way that Jesus revealed the Life of the Kingdom he came to invite humankind into. This Life of God, a grand and cosmic reality, is also manifest on a sub-atomic, micro level. And one of its most fundamental principles is transformation. That is how God-Life becomes visible, wherever one thing is transformed into another.
In this story, we see water transformed into fine wine, the ordinary into the extraordinary. At our communion tables, we experience ordinary wine transformed into the blood of Christ. Whether or not molecules are altered in that transaction is immaterial (ba-dum-bum…).A spiritual transformation takes place that catalyzes an even deeper transformation: ordinary people are transformed into carriers of God’s Life. The Bread becomes the Body, and then the corporate Body becomes the bread broken again to be shared with the world.
As we allow this Life to take root in us, we experience the deep transformation of our spirits, being reshaped by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the One who took water, which is amazing and beautiful in itself, and made something else amazing and beautiful out of it. God does the same with us.
However you are feeling about yourself or your life today, remember this: Jesus has taken us at our best and our worst, our most faithful and most self-centered, our most creative and least inspired, and has already turned us into wine of rarest vintage to bring life and joy to the people around us. Let’s not only attend the party – let’s be the wine
© 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.
1-16-25 - To the Brim
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Sometimes I wonder if God shakes his God-head at the tiny scope of my prayers. “Please, let me be on time!” “Heal this muscle ache.” “What shall I preach Sunday?” The Maker of Heaven and Earth invites us to pray for earthquakes to subside and wars to cease, and most of us don’t even dare to pray about cancer and injustice. Do we think God is finished doing the big things, or that we're only worth the small stuff?
If we based our prayer life on what we read in the gospels, we’d pray about big things all the time, because we see big responses – abundance beyond measure, even beyond need. Twelve baskets of leftovers, and here, in Jesus’ first public miracle, more wine of greatest excellence than the whole town of Cana could get through: Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.
Did Jesus select those jars because of their size? Or because of their purpose, for ritual baths? Are we to make a link between purification and the wine that is to be manifest in these vessels? Those who go in for a more allegorical approach to biblical interpretation would say every detail, especially in the Fourth Gospel, is fair game. Today, let’s just focus on the size and capacity of these jars. Jesus wasn’t making only a little bit of table wine; he was crafting vats of the finest vintage. Because that’s how God rolls.
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap,” Jesus says later, exhorting his followers to generosity. (Luke 6:38). The Realm of God is not a place of just enough, though sometimes “just enough” is our experience. That experience can dampen our expectation of God’s radical abundant provision.
We need to recall those times when we’ve experienced more than enough, when the jars were filled to the brim, when the gift was completely out of proportion to our sense of deserving or ability to respond in kind. Remembering those times can help us raise our expectations of God’s power and love. Another thing that does that for me is hearing people's "God stories" and reading healing books. Those tales of God’s power transforming situations, sometimes against all natural hope, inspire me to greater boldness in my prayers, and bolder prayers lead to bolder participation in God’s mission.
The next time you feel the pinch of scarcity – or even just the fear of it – call to mind a large stone water jar, filled to the brim with water, a little sloshing over. And then realize it’s not water at all, but thousands of dollars worth of a precious liquid of your choice, all for the taking and sharing.
And then realize God wants to fill us to the brim with Life, transforming our dross into grace for the world. Are we vessels with enough capacity? There’s a prayer…
© 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.
Sometimes I wonder if God shakes his God-head at the tiny scope of my prayers. “Please, let me be on time!” “Heal this muscle ache.” “What shall I preach Sunday?” The Maker of Heaven and Earth invites us to pray for earthquakes to subside and wars to cease, and most of us don’t even dare to pray about cancer and injustice. Do we think God is finished doing the big things, or that we're only worth the small stuff?
If we based our prayer life on what we read in the gospels, we’d pray about big things all the time, because we see big responses – abundance beyond measure, even beyond need. Twelve baskets of leftovers, and here, in Jesus’ first public miracle, more wine of greatest excellence than the whole town of Cana could get through: Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.
Did Jesus select those jars because of their size? Or because of their purpose, for ritual baths? Are we to make a link between purification and the wine that is to be manifest in these vessels? Those who go in for a more allegorical approach to biblical interpretation would say every detail, especially in the Fourth Gospel, is fair game. Today, let’s just focus on the size and capacity of these jars. Jesus wasn’t making only a little bit of table wine; he was crafting vats of the finest vintage. Because that’s how God rolls.
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap,” Jesus says later, exhorting his followers to generosity. (Luke 6:38). The Realm of God is not a place of just enough, though sometimes “just enough” is our experience. That experience can dampen our expectation of God’s radical abundant provision.
We need to recall those times when we’ve experienced more than enough, when the jars were filled to the brim, when the gift was completely out of proportion to our sense of deserving or ability to respond in kind. Remembering those times can help us raise our expectations of God’s power and love. Another thing that does that for me is hearing people's "God stories" and reading healing books. Those tales of God’s power transforming situations, sometimes against all natural hope, inspire me to greater boldness in my prayers, and bolder prayers lead to bolder participation in God’s mission.
The next time you feel the pinch of scarcity – or even just the fear of it – call to mind a large stone water jar, filled to the brim with water, a little sloshing over. And then realize it’s not water at all, but thousands of dollars worth of a precious liquid of your choice, all for the taking and sharing.
And then realize God wants to fill us to the brim with Life, transforming our dross into grace for the world. Are we vessels with enough capacity? There’s a prayer…
© 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.
1-15-25 - Follow Instructions
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
In addition to its other charms, this story of the wedding feast and the wine gives us a glimpse into Jesus’ relationship with his mother. He had no problem saying “no” to her when she nudged him to use his super-powers to address the wine shortage – and she had no problem ignoring his “no.” When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Despite his demurral, Jesus does enlist the servants, and somehow storage jars filled with water become vats of finest wine. His instructions to the servants are two-fold: Fill the giant jars with water, and then draw some off and take it to the chief steward. Jesus works the miracle, but it is accomplished through ordinary servants who followed his instructions, as daft as they may have seemed.
When God is up to something in this world, something big and transformational, it is generally done through people like us. And often, the bigger the “something,” the whackier the instructions seem. Quit your job. Sell your house. Leave your country. Call that person. Join that movement. Raise thousands of dollars. Give away thousands of dollars.
Maybe God is always asking outrageous things of us, and we just aren’t getting the message. Or maybe these things happen rarely. I do know that the instructions usually come one at a time. We have to do the first thing before we find out what the next is. Fill the jars, all the jars. All the jars? With that much water? That’s crazy? But we have to do that before we get the next instruction: draw some off. And it’s only after the chief steward has tasted that we know just what a crazy thing God has just done.
Can you recall a time you felt prompted by the Spirit to do something odd, bold, even controversial? Did you do it? What happened? Are you receiving such promptings in your life now? What instruction are you being given?
God’s instructions to me haven’t been that wild – the most extreme I can think of were “Take on a boatload of debt to attend seminary” (and that was never the message; the message was just so clear I didn’t think twice about the debt…) and “Go to this little place called Charles County, Maryland and pastor two churches there. And then wait, and see if I don’t bless your socks off.”
If you draw a blank when asked that question, you might try asking God straight out: “Where do you want me to further your plans today? What purpose can I help fulfill?” Then pay attention and see what develops – and while you’re waiting, enjoy the party!
© 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 addition to its other charms, this story of the wedding feast and the wine gives us a glimpse into Jesus’ relationship with his mother. He had no problem saying “no” to her when she nudged him to use his super-powers to address the wine shortage – and she had no problem ignoring his “no.” When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Despite his demurral, Jesus does enlist the servants, and somehow storage jars filled with water become vats of finest wine. His instructions to the servants are two-fold: Fill the giant jars with water, and then draw some off and take it to the chief steward. Jesus works the miracle, but it is accomplished through ordinary servants who followed his instructions, as daft as they may have seemed.
When God is up to something in this world, something big and transformational, it is generally done through people like us. And often, the bigger the “something,” the whackier the instructions seem. Quit your job. Sell your house. Leave your country. Call that person. Join that movement. Raise thousands of dollars. Give away thousands of dollars.
Maybe God is always asking outrageous things of us, and we just aren’t getting the message. Or maybe these things happen rarely. I do know that the instructions usually come one at a time. We have to do the first thing before we find out what the next is. Fill the jars, all the jars. All the jars? With that much water? That’s crazy? But we have to do that before we get the next instruction: draw some off. And it’s only after the chief steward has tasted that we know just what a crazy thing God has just done.
Can you recall a time you felt prompted by the Spirit to do something odd, bold, even controversial? Did you do it? What happened? Are you receiving such promptings in your life now? What instruction are you being given?
God’s instructions to me haven’t been that wild – the most extreme I can think of were “Take on a boatload of debt to attend seminary” (and that was never the message; the message was just so clear I didn’t think twice about the debt…) and “Go to this little place called Charles County, Maryland and pastor two churches there. And then wait, and see if I don’t bless your socks off.”
If you draw a blank when asked that question, you might try asking God straight out: “Where do you want me to further your plans today? What purpose can I help fulfill?” Then pay attention and see what develops – and while you’re waiting, enjoy the party!
© 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.
1-14-25 - When the Wine Runs Out
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
An Episcopal Church running out of wine? It could never be. Yet I’ll never forget the Easter Sunday at a New York parish when the Altar Guild failed to put out enough communion wine. Alerted to this crisis while distributing communion, the Curate, who lived onsite, ran up to his apartment and fetched several bottles of Rioja, and no one was the wiser. Except that those seated in the back half of the 1000-seat sanctuary thought, not unlike the steward in this week’s story, “Wow – they really get out the good stuff at Easter.”
Jesus had no intention of coming to the rescue when his hosts ran out of wine. But the story wasn't over: When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
I love the way it says, “When the wine ran out,” as though it were a given that the wine would run out. And that is often our experience in life, that the good things don’t last, grand romance fades into the ordinary, abundance dwindles to “just enough,” or sometimes not enough at all. Yet the record of the New Testament – and much of the Hebrew Bible too – is that this is never the end of the story. Things run out, and somehow more is found. Oil and flour, wine and water, bread and fish, time and energy - even life.
Our invitation, in those moments when it seems the wine has run out, is to widen the lens and see where in the picture abundance might be found. Instead of getting paralyzed with fear or forlorn with despair, we can ask God to show us where provision can be found. We can pray for an infusion of hope, which fuels our creativity and openness to new ways of thinking. And we can share our concerns with people around us, and learn their perspective on the matter.
One message of this funny story about Jesus at the wedding feast is that nothing is impossible where God is concerned. We don’t always know how things are transformed, but the effect is that there is enough and more than enough. In my experience, the more we trust in that, the more often we see it manifest. Wine may run out, but God’s grace never does. And more often than not it turns out that someone has a stash of good Spanish red nearby.
© 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.
An Episcopal Church running out of wine? It could never be. Yet I’ll never forget the Easter Sunday at a New York parish when the Altar Guild failed to put out enough communion wine. Alerted to this crisis while distributing communion, the Curate, who lived onsite, ran up to his apartment and fetched several bottles of Rioja, and no one was the wiser. Except that those seated in the back half of the 1000-seat sanctuary thought, not unlike the steward in this week’s story, “Wow – they really get out the good stuff at Easter.”
Jesus had no intention of coming to the rescue when his hosts ran out of wine. But the story wasn't over: When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
I love the way it says, “When the wine ran out,” as though it were a given that the wine would run out. And that is often our experience in life, that the good things don’t last, grand romance fades into the ordinary, abundance dwindles to “just enough,” or sometimes not enough at all. Yet the record of the New Testament – and much of the Hebrew Bible too – is that this is never the end of the story. Things run out, and somehow more is found. Oil and flour, wine and water, bread and fish, time and energy - even life.
Our invitation, in those moments when it seems the wine has run out, is to widen the lens and see where in the picture abundance might be found. Instead of getting paralyzed with fear or forlorn with despair, we can ask God to show us where provision can be found. We can pray for an infusion of hope, which fuels our creativity and openness to new ways of thinking. And we can share our concerns with people around us, and learn their perspective on the matter.
One message of this funny story about Jesus at the wedding feast is that nothing is impossible where God is concerned. We don’t always know how things are transformed, but the effect is that there is enough and more than enough. In my experience, the more we trust in that, the more often we see it manifest. Wine may run out, but God’s grace never does. And more often than not it turns out that someone has a stash of good Spanish red nearby.
© 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.
1-13-25 - Life of the Party
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I was once part of a church that got into conflict about whether or not to host wedding receptions. Some deemed it not worth the risk of harming the floor in the parish hall, which doubled as a gym, or overloading staff and supplies. I was staunchly in the “pro-party” camp, proclaiming that the wedding reception was at least as important as the ceremony in terms of the community’s coming together to support the new marriage. “Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding reception! How on earth could we make couples go out and pay tens of thousands of dollars instead of celebrating at church?,” I said. In the end the pro-party view prevailed, and I attended – even coordinated one or two – many a fine wedding reception in that space.
The gospel story we get to play with this week is the only one in which we find Jesus at a wedding: On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
It is such a gift that the gospels show us scenes of Jesus at parties. One wonders how such a dour seriousness became associated with the Jesus movement when he himself knew how to mix it up with people socially. He often got into trouble for it – but he also often found in these occasions opportunities to demonstrate the life of God.
Our holiday party season may be behind us, but warmer weather will bring plenty of social opportunities. Maybe we’d like to bring Jesus with us to the next party we attend. Every conversation we have, every time we offer help to the host, there is an opening for showing love, and even for spiritual encounter, as we are conscious of Jesus being with us. And if we’re hosting, we might think about where Jesus is sitting. I’m often too busy hostessing to be spiritually present… and yet, what better gift could I offer my guests than my spiritual self along with fine food and drinks?
We may not be turning water into wine, but we can transform the ordinary into the sacred just by bringing Jesus along with us and letting his Spirit kick things up a notch. You never know what might happen when he's at the party.
© 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 was once part of a church that got into conflict about whether or not to host wedding receptions. Some deemed it not worth the risk of harming the floor in the parish hall, which doubled as a gym, or overloading staff and supplies. I was staunchly in the “pro-party” camp, proclaiming that the wedding reception was at least as important as the ceremony in terms of the community’s coming together to support the new marriage. “Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding reception! How on earth could we make couples go out and pay tens of thousands of dollars instead of celebrating at church?,” I said. In the end the pro-party view prevailed, and I attended – even coordinated one or two – many a fine wedding reception in that space.
The gospel story we get to play with this week is the only one in which we find Jesus at a wedding: On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
It is such a gift that the gospels show us scenes of Jesus at parties. One wonders how such a dour seriousness became associated with the Jesus movement when he himself knew how to mix it up with people socially. He often got into trouble for it – but he also often found in these occasions opportunities to demonstrate the life of God.
Our holiday party season may be behind us, but warmer weather will bring plenty of social opportunities. Maybe we’d like to bring Jesus with us to the next party we attend. Every conversation we have, every time we offer help to the host, there is an opening for showing love, and even for spiritual encounter, as we are conscious of Jesus being with us. And if we’re hosting, we might think about where Jesus is sitting. I’m often too busy hostessing to be spiritually present… and yet, what better gift could I offer my guests than my spiritual self along with fine food and drinks?
We may not be turning water into wine, but we can transform the ordinary into the sacred just by bringing Jesus along with us and letting his Spirit kick things up a notch. You never know what might happen when he's at the party.
© 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.
1-10-25 - Cherished
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Arguably the most important gift of baptism is never articulated in the ritual itself: being told we are loved beyond measure by the God who made us and sustains our life. It is implicit in the rite as well as in the whole Gospel story. “For God so loved the world….” begins one of the best-known summaries of the Good News. But it’s not explicit in the liturgical language.
It was when Jesus was baptized: Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Why can’t that voice ring more loudly for us? Our awareness of being beloved is so easily drowned out by the criticisms of others, the judgments of the world, and our own harsh self-appraisals. I wonder if Jesus was able to recall that deep affirmation in the moments when he was most under attack or stress. I hope he was.
How can we better remember, proclaim and live out of our belovedness? One way is to remind ourselves in prayer every morning, when all possibilities are new: You are beloved. And again at the end of the day, when we can be tempted to regret things we’ve done or left undone: Can we park those regrets at the door marked “Beloved: Please Come In?” (Casting Crowns has a good song about that...)
Of course, we generally understand belovedness most fully when we experience it from other people. Maybe we can make a practice of letting others feel beloved, whether or not they return the favor. I’m reminded of the promise in the marriage vows, to “love, honor and cherish.” That word “cherish” seems to me to be the most neglected in many marriages, and even friendships. The word is rooted in the Latin carus, from which we also get charity and love.
We are more than loved by God, my friends. We are cherished. We are delighted in. We are pleasing in God's sight. God sees us even now, through Christ, as we will fully be, and so God is already as delighted with us as can possibly be. We don’t have to do one more thing. Except receive God’s love, take it in, let it grow in us, and accept that we are cherished.
© 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.
Arguably the most important gift of baptism is never articulated in the ritual itself: being told we are loved beyond measure by the God who made us and sustains our life. It is implicit in the rite as well as in the whole Gospel story. “For God so loved the world….” begins one of the best-known summaries of the Good News. But it’s not explicit in the liturgical language.
It was when Jesus was baptized: Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Why can’t that voice ring more loudly for us? Our awareness of being beloved is so easily drowned out by the criticisms of others, the judgments of the world, and our own harsh self-appraisals. I wonder if Jesus was able to recall that deep affirmation in the moments when he was most under attack or stress. I hope he was.
How can we better remember, proclaim and live out of our belovedness? One way is to remind ourselves in prayer every morning, when all possibilities are new: You are beloved. And again at the end of the day, when we can be tempted to regret things we’ve done or left undone: Can we park those regrets at the door marked “Beloved: Please Come In?” (Casting Crowns has a good song about that...)
Of course, we generally understand belovedness most fully when we experience it from other people. Maybe we can make a practice of letting others feel beloved, whether or not they return the favor. I’m reminded of the promise in the marriage vows, to “love, honor and cherish.” That word “cherish” seems to me to be the most neglected in many marriages, and even friendships. The word is rooted in the Latin carus, from which we also get charity and love.
We are more than loved by God, my friends. We are cherished. We are delighted in. We are pleasing in God's sight. God sees us even now, through Christ, as we will fully be, and so God is already as delighted with us as can possibly be. We don’t have to do one more thing. Except receive God’s love, take it in, let it grow in us, and accept that we are cherished.
© 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.
1-9-25 - Empowered
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When John the Baptizer was asked if he was the Messiah, or Elijah returned, he demurred: “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Baptism in water is only the visible part of the gift. It is our unseen baptism in the Holy Spirit that changes everything. Too often churches neglect this greatest of all gifts, so dazzled by the play of water we don’t notice the fire at work. But fire is promised, and the Spirit is given to us, just as Jesus was anointed by the Spirit in his baptism.
The question is, what happens to that gift if we never use it, if we leave it wrapped up in a closet somewhere like that punch bowl Aunt Edna gave you for your wedding? I don’t believe the Spirit leaves us, but neither will the Spirit make his presence felt if we don’t invite her and exercise her gifts. Most of us have the ability to run a marathon, but unless we train and exercise, we lack the capacity. Similarly, many Christians leave the gifts of the Spirit unexercised. Then, when we’re confronted by what feels like a big prayer, a big need for healing or peace or reconciliation, we feel daunted and lacking in power.
Well, guess what? We have the power! We are given the power at baptism and it is confirmed in us at confirmation (that’s what “confirmed” means – confirmare, to strengthen). The power that made the universe and raised Christ from the dead lives in us. Will we exercise it or leave it on the shelf?
Like the other gifts of baptism we’re exploring this week – adoption, forgiveness, inclusion, belovedness – the gift of the Spirit’s power gets stronger when we remind each other it’s there. We can build our power-paks by asking for prayer more often. I know people who always say, “I’m fine,” when asked how they might be prayed for. That denies the Christians around that person the chance to exercise their spiritual gifts. Don’t say, “No thank you.” Tell people where in your life you’d like to see God’s power and love manifest. Don’t hold back or just ask for easy things. Be bold in prayer.
When you ask another person to pray for you, you’re more likely to pray for them. When we have a whole community exercising its faith in prayer, we get an empowered church, and nothing can stand in its way.
© 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.
When John the Baptizer was asked if he was the Messiah, or Elijah returned, he demurred: “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
Baptism in water is only the visible part of the gift. It is our unseen baptism in the Holy Spirit that changes everything. Too often churches neglect this greatest of all gifts, so dazzled by the play of water we don’t notice the fire at work. But fire is promised, and the Spirit is given to us, just as Jesus was anointed by the Spirit in his baptism.
The question is, what happens to that gift if we never use it, if we leave it wrapped up in a closet somewhere like that punch bowl Aunt Edna gave you for your wedding? I don’t believe the Spirit leaves us, but neither will the Spirit make his presence felt if we don’t invite her and exercise her gifts. Most of us have the ability to run a marathon, but unless we train and exercise, we lack the capacity. Similarly, many Christians leave the gifts of the Spirit unexercised. Then, when we’re confronted by what feels like a big prayer, a big need for healing or peace or reconciliation, we feel daunted and lacking in power.
Well, guess what? We have the power! We are given the power at baptism and it is confirmed in us at confirmation (that’s what “confirmed” means – confirmare, to strengthen). The power that made the universe and raised Christ from the dead lives in us. Will we exercise it or leave it on the shelf?
Like the other gifts of baptism we’re exploring this week – adoption, forgiveness, inclusion, belovedness – the gift of the Spirit’s power gets stronger when we remind each other it’s there. We can build our power-paks by asking for prayer more often. I know people who always say, “I’m fine,” when asked how they might be prayed for. That denies the Christians around that person the chance to exercise their spiritual gifts. Don’t say, “No thank you.” Tell people where in your life you’d like to see God’s power and love manifest. Don’t hold back or just ask for easy things. Be bold in prayer.
When you ask another person to pray for you, you’re more likely to pray for them. When we have a whole community exercising its faith in prayer, we get an empowered church, and nothing can stand in its way.
© 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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