You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This week we dive deep into a story about Jesus’ giving sight to a man who was born blind, and the trouble that unleashes. We’d like to think such a healing would result only in rejoicing – but overturning the laws of nature and probability unsettles people and societies, especially those with the delusion that they are in control.
As the story begins, the man does not ask for sight – who would ask for the impossible? He’s never known what it is to see. Jesus and his disciples pass him and the disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” In Jesus’ day, misfortune, illnesses, even infertility were assumed to be consequences of sin, just as prosperity and health were seen as signs of God’s blessing. Jesus rejects that kind of causality, but suggests something that to my ears is equally troubling: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
Was Jesus was saying this man was singled out for misfortune just so God could swoop in with a razzle-dazzle miracle later in his life? I don’t think so. I think he suggests that all situations of suffering, no matter their source, are opportunities for us to bring the power and love of God to bear to transform them. We might go so far as, “Don’t waste your time wondering what happened in the past – God’s power is about what happens next.”
And Jesus takes the opportunity to reveal the power of God right there. “…he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.”
There are many mysteries in this story, among them this: Why does Jesus go through this strange exercise of making a paste of mud and saliva, when he could just speak healing upon the blind man? Why does he send him to wash in the pool to somehow “release” the healing? Archeologists have discovered ruins suggesting the Pool of Siloam was spring-fed, not stagnant, which would have made it an acceptable place for ritual bathing and purification. Are there echoes here of Jesus’ words to the woman at the well about living water? Did he have the man wash at the pool so that the sacred places of Israel would be part of the healing? Did he make the mud paste to convey that ordinary things can become sacramental, vehicles of the holy for us?
Our Gospel accounts show Jesus healing in different ways – sometimes just with a word, sometimes with matter, sometimes in person, sometimes remotely, sometimes incorporating established rituals. He uses his own saliva also in restoring speech and hearing to a deaf-mute, and in another healing of a blind man. No matter how squeamish we may be about spit, this story tells us that God is not limited to one method or set of words – and that the healing power of God alive in us is mingled with the very matter of our bodies and minds. God’s healing is always mediated through a person who prays, whether with words, with a touch, or through a prayer shawl. The “stuff” of our lives can become holy as we invite God to consecrate it.
Today, let's offer a prayer of thanksgiving for our bodies, starting with our feet and moving upward – for the way your body and senses carry you, enable you to do ministry, to make God’s love and power known to others. If there is someone you know in need of healing, pray for God’s healing to be released in that person as it was in the blind man.
His story continues, “Then he went and washed and came back able to see.” It was "impossible" then - and "impossible" now. Except, the same God is at work in us. So look out...
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
3-6-26 - Ripe For Harvest
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This week’s story is a lesson in faith-sharing – also known as evangelism. A woman meets Jesus, and discovers in him the power of God. When he tells her that he is, in fact, the Anointed of God, the Messiah long-awaited by Jew and Samaritan alike, she believes him. She is sure enough that she drops her water jar and runs back to town to tell her neighbors about him – and then they come to check him out themselves: Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile, Jesus’ disciples come back with lunch, which he declines: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvest.”
Is Jesus having a moment of discovery? Has he found, in this alien territory, a mission field he had discounted, assuming he was only to bring his gifts to the Jewish people? Perhaps this encounter with the woman has expanded his understanding of his mission.
He will soon find out just how ripe these fields are when he spends a few days in that town, after which the townspeople profess their own faith in his messiahship: And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world."
Our job as Christ followers is to tell the stories of our encounters with God. We don’t have to persuade anyone to affirm the Nicene Creed, just speak our God-stories. If our stories are tepid, we may be too locked into thinking our “God-encounters” are things that happen in church. Church stories can be dull to people outside the congregation. But “God stories” are rarely dull – this woman’s story certainly wasn’t. And her excitement and passion helped ignite curiosity and anticipation in her neighbors.
What kind of news do you tend to share with excitement? Great things that have happened? Achievements? Stories of travel? Cultural events? Meals? Your grandchildren’s exploits? This weekend, try to notice when your energy rises in conversation – what are you talking about at those points? Can you think of a “holy moment” that you might share with someone? Pray about who needs to hear that story.
If telling people how great our church is was an effective means of spreading the Good News, our churches would be full. They’re not. Yet, the fields are still ripe with people hungry for spiritual connections that are authentic and personal. Let’s do what this woman did, and go tell our neighbors about our encounters with Jesus, with God, with the Holy Spirit.
We just need to introduce people to Jesus; he will do the rest. Then maybe we’ll get to hear those joyful words too – “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe. We have heard for ourselves, and now we know.”
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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 story is a lesson in faith-sharing – also known as evangelism. A woman meets Jesus, and discovers in him the power of God. When he tells her that he is, in fact, the Anointed of God, the Messiah long-awaited by Jew and Samaritan alike, she believes him. She is sure enough that she drops her water jar and runs back to town to tell her neighbors about him – and then they come to check him out themselves: Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile, Jesus’ disciples come back with lunch, which he declines: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvest.”
Is Jesus having a moment of discovery? Has he found, in this alien territory, a mission field he had discounted, assuming he was only to bring his gifts to the Jewish people? Perhaps this encounter with the woman has expanded his understanding of his mission.
He will soon find out just how ripe these fields are when he spends a few days in that town, after which the townspeople profess their own faith in his messiahship: And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world."
Our job as Christ followers is to tell the stories of our encounters with God. We don’t have to persuade anyone to affirm the Nicene Creed, just speak our God-stories. If our stories are tepid, we may be too locked into thinking our “God-encounters” are things that happen in church. Church stories can be dull to people outside the congregation. But “God stories” are rarely dull – this woman’s story certainly wasn’t. And her excitement and passion helped ignite curiosity and anticipation in her neighbors.
What kind of news do you tend to share with excitement? Great things that have happened? Achievements? Stories of travel? Cultural events? Meals? Your grandchildren’s exploits? This weekend, try to notice when your energy rises in conversation – what are you talking about at those points? Can you think of a “holy moment” that you might share with someone? Pray about who needs to hear that story.
If telling people how great our church is was an effective means of spreading the Good News, our churches would be full. They’re not. Yet, the fields are still ripe with people hungry for spiritual connections that are authentic and personal. Let’s do what this woman did, and go tell our neighbors about our encounters with Jesus, with God, with the Holy Spirit.
We just need to introduce people to Jesus; he will do the rest. Then maybe we’ll get to hear those joyful words too – “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe. We have heard for ourselves, and now we know.”
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
3-5-26 - In Spirit and Truth
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When Jesus names some truth about her life, the woman he has encountered at a well does not comment, but abruptly changes the subject to the source of division between Jews and Samaritans: “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
This could just be an evasive pivot away from the uncomfortable topic of her personal life. Or is she actually trying to deepen the conversation, “Okay, Mister, if we’re going to talk truth, let’s talk about why your people and mine don’t get along. Let’s talk about our relationship. Why do you say we all have to worship in Jerusalem?”
Jesus gives her a full and perhaps surprising answer: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
This truth Jesus offers should be emblazoned on our church buildings and service bulletins. How and where we worship can both lead us into divine presence, and keep us far away. It is human nature to seek connection with the holy – and when we find it, to attempt to recreate the circumstances we believe led to that moment. Thus we develop ritual, and we repeat it and soon deem it sacred, and then all kinds of actions and objects and spaces and even clothing accrue – and before we know it, we can put our focus on all the apparatus and lose sight of the divine connection we were seeking in the first place.
Worship, as Jesus defines it, is not something we do. It is how we open ourselves to encounter with the Living God. It is a spiritual activity, engaging our spirits – and, because our spirits are embodied, also our senses, minds and bodies. And worship is truth-seeking. We don’t need to be in church to worship – church can sometimes help, and sometimes get in the way. What we need is an open heart and humility.
When do you feel yourself most fully alive in worship? Is it in church? If so, what elements draw you in? Music? Prayer? Proclamation? Teaching? Movement? Sacrament? It’s good to be aware of how you feel most connected to God.
Maybe you feel yourself most worshipful in silence or in solitude or in nature or doing something for someone else – it’s good to know that too, so you can honor that as worship. If you don’t feel you connect to God in worship of any kind, you might ask the Spirit to show you a way for you.
Worship, above all else, is encounter – a profoundly cross-cultural encounter across boundaries of difference more pronounced even than the ethnic, religious and gender barriers Jesus and this woman were bridging. Worship is an encounter between a mere human, unique and ordinary, and the God who made all things, holy and transcendent. And yet, God invites us to meet, to break bread, even to dance.
The hour is coming – and is now here – when God is in our midst, in spirit and in truth. God has shown up. Will we?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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 Jesus names some truth about her life, the woman he has encountered at a well does not comment, but abruptly changes the subject to the source of division between Jews and Samaritans: “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
This could just be an evasive pivot away from the uncomfortable topic of her personal life. Or is she actually trying to deepen the conversation, “Okay, Mister, if we’re going to talk truth, let’s talk about why your people and mine don’t get along. Let’s talk about our relationship. Why do you say we all have to worship in Jerusalem?”
Jesus gives her a full and perhaps surprising answer: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
This truth Jesus offers should be emblazoned on our church buildings and service bulletins. How and where we worship can both lead us into divine presence, and keep us far away. It is human nature to seek connection with the holy – and when we find it, to attempt to recreate the circumstances we believe led to that moment. Thus we develop ritual, and we repeat it and soon deem it sacred, and then all kinds of actions and objects and spaces and even clothing accrue – and before we know it, we can put our focus on all the apparatus and lose sight of the divine connection we were seeking in the first place.
Worship, as Jesus defines it, is not something we do. It is how we open ourselves to encounter with the Living God. It is a spiritual activity, engaging our spirits – and, because our spirits are embodied, also our senses, minds and bodies. And worship is truth-seeking. We don’t need to be in church to worship – church can sometimes help, and sometimes get in the way. What we need is an open heart and humility.
When do you feel yourself most fully alive in worship? Is it in church? If so, what elements draw you in? Music? Prayer? Proclamation? Teaching? Movement? Sacrament? It’s good to be aware of how you feel most connected to God.
Maybe you feel yourself most worshipful in silence or in solitude or in nature or doing something for someone else – it’s good to know that too, so you can honor that as worship. If you don’t feel you connect to God in worship of any kind, you might ask the Spirit to show you a way for you.
Worship, above all else, is encounter – a profoundly cross-cultural encounter across boundaries of difference more pronounced even than the ethnic, religious and gender barriers Jesus and this woman were bridging. Worship is an encounter between a mere human, unique and ordinary, and the God who made all things, holy and transcendent. And yet, God invites us to meet, to break bread, even to dance.
The hour is coming – and is now here – when God is in our midst, in spirit and in truth. God has shown up. Will we?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
3-4-26 - Talking Past
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Here’s a term that wasn’t around when John was compiling his gospel: slut-shaming. Is that what Jesus does with the Samaritan woman he meets at the well in this week’s gospel story?
Jesus and the woman have been exchanging words; I’m not sure we can call it conversation. They keep talking past each other. He asks her for water; she wonders why he’s willing to ask her. He says if she knew who was asking, she’d be asking him – and that the water he gives never runs out. She goes literal – and sarcastic: ‘Okay, so give me this water, so that I may never thirst or have to keep coming here for water.’
And Jesus changes the subject. Abruptly. “‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” If this is meant to shut her up, it doesn’t work: “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet,” and swiftly changes the subject again.
How did she feel when Jesus spoke her past to her? He had no earthly way of knowing this about her. But she doesn’t deny it – and more significantly, she doesn’t break off the conversation. Sure, she changes the subject, launching into a discussion of proper locations for worship, a topic that divided Jews and Samaritans, but she doesn’t leave. There must have been something about the way Jesus spoke and looked at her that invited her to be real, not hidden.
That is how the Holy Spirit works in us. Sometimes we are to God as wild animals are to humans – skittish, afraid to get too close. And God comes into our lives, sits down, starts a conversation, which we might do our best to obscure or keep on a surface level of needs and thank you’s, so that we can avoid really being known. Then we find out we are in the presence of the One who already knows us, knows everything thing about us, the good, the bad, the ugly – and isn’t walking away.
Have you had that kind of conversation with God lately? Ever? What would you rather Jesus didn’t know about you? Can you bring it up first? Just lay it out there… see how he reacts, what he says?
Chances are, you will come away feeling more accepted and loved than blamed or shamed. If you've ever seen a 12-step meeting in action, you've seen how this works on a human level: people are accepted as they speak the worst about themselves, and are loved into sobriety. If this can happen with people, imagine how thoroughly God can love us into wholeness as we make ourselves available.
We learn later that this moment with Jesus hit home, for the woman runs back to her townspeople – the ones whose judgment she was presumably avoiding – and tells them, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!” She has not been shamed. She has been liberated by discovering that the Lord of heaven and earth can know everything about her and still offer love and forgiveness.
I hope you have discovered that freedom, more than once. As we receive it, so are we able to give it.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
Here’s a term that wasn’t around when John was compiling his gospel: slut-shaming. Is that what Jesus does with the Samaritan woman he meets at the well in this week’s gospel story?
Jesus and the woman have been exchanging words; I’m not sure we can call it conversation. They keep talking past each other. He asks her for water; she wonders why he’s willing to ask her. He says if she knew who was asking, she’d be asking him – and that the water he gives never runs out. She goes literal – and sarcastic: ‘Okay, so give me this water, so that I may never thirst or have to keep coming here for water.’
And Jesus changes the subject. Abruptly. “‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” If this is meant to shut her up, it doesn’t work: “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet,” and swiftly changes the subject again.
How did she feel when Jesus spoke her past to her? He had no earthly way of knowing this about her. But she doesn’t deny it – and more significantly, she doesn’t break off the conversation. Sure, she changes the subject, launching into a discussion of proper locations for worship, a topic that divided Jews and Samaritans, but she doesn’t leave. There must have been something about the way Jesus spoke and looked at her that invited her to be real, not hidden.
That is how the Holy Spirit works in us. Sometimes we are to God as wild animals are to humans – skittish, afraid to get too close. And God comes into our lives, sits down, starts a conversation, which we might do our best to obscure or keep on a surface level of needs and thank you’s, so that we can avoid really being known. Then we find out we are in the presence of the One who already knows us, knows everything thing about us, the good, the bad, the ugly – and isn’t walking away.
Have you had that kind of conversation with God lately? Ever? What would you rather Jesus didn’t know about you? Can you bring it up first? Just lay it out there… see how he reacts, what he says?
Chances are, you will come away feeling more accepted and loved than blamed or shamed. If you've ever seen a 12-step meeting in action, you've seen how this works on a human level: people are accepted as they speak the worst about themselves, and are loved into sobriety. If this can happen with people, imagine how thoroughly God can love us into wholeness as we make ourselves available.
We learn later that this moment with Jesus hit home, for the woman runs back to her townspeople – the ones whose judgment she was presumably avoiding – and tells them, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did!” She has not been shamed. She has been liberated by discovering that the Lord of heaven and earth can know everything about her and still offer love and forgiveness.
I hope you have discovered that freedom, more than once. As we receive it, so are we able to give it.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
3-3-26 - Never Thirst
You can listen to this reflection herehere. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Wouldn’t it be nice to find the source of something we deem precious, so we could always access it?
A tired woman comes out to a well when the sun is highest, repeating a chore that no doubt has shaped her days most of her life. It is her job to fetch water for the household. It’s not so bad going, but carrying the heavy jars back to town is a burden she’d gladly give up. Why she comes at noon, in the heat of the day, we are not told. Does she want to avoid the stares and murmurs of her community?
A man is there, a Jew. She doubts she has anything to fear, but wishes he were not there to disturb her solitude. Jews are so condescending to her people, as though they weren’t just another branch on the same tree. She nods at him and sets about lowering her jar. He speaks, “Give me a drink.”
She says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" His answer is puzzling, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
She is in no mood for riddles. Does he not know the holiness of this well, its history? “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus is not done being mysterious: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
A spring of water in us, gushing. Here is an image of life, of movement. If you’ve ever been mesmerized by rushing water in a brook or river, or stared at a waterfall or waves crashing, receding, returning, crashing again, you know how powerful an image this is of abundance. And Jesus locates this gushing spring not outside of us but inside, where we always have access. This spring is God’s life, renewing us.
What do you most wish you’d never run out of? If your answer is something material – food, money – it’s good to name it. If it’s something emotional – love, affirmation, attention – it’s important to be aware of what motivates you. God gives us no guarantees of provision in those areas. But spiritual commodities, like peace, healing, forgiveness, love, these all come with God’s living water in us, and they are always being replenished.
Today in prayer image that river of God-life flowing through you, dislodging all the debris of sin and hurt, and bearing it away, renewing and refreshing everything in its path. You might reflect on areas in which you feel empty or dry, and invite the river to flow to those places. If you feel a need of healing, invite the river to flow into that area. If you’re burdened by anxiety about the world or other people, invite the river to flow through those places, a visual prayer.
As we become more practiced at accessing the living water inside us, the spiritual gifts it brings may just make us more content about those material and emotional areas we worry about. After all, this living water is the river of God, which Jesus likens to the Holy Spirit. Our mouths may thirst, our stomachs may hunger – yet with this spring inside us, our spirits need never go dry.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
Wouldn’t it be nice to find the source of something we deem precious, so we could always access it?
A tired woman comes out to a well when the sun is highest, repeating a chore that no doubt has shaped her days most of her life. It is her job to fetch water for the household. It’s not so bad going, but carrying the heavy jars back to town is a burden she’d gladly give up. Why she comes at noon, in the heat of the day, we are not told. Does she want to avoid the stares and murmurs of her community?
A man is there, a Jew. She doubts she has anything to fear, but wishes he were not there to disturb her solitude. Jews are so condescending to her people, as though they weren’t just another branch on the same tree. She nods at him and sets about lowering her jar. He speaks, “Give me a drink.”
She says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" His answer is puzzling, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
She is in no mood for riddles. Does he not know the holiness of this well, its history? “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus is not done being mysterious: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
A spring of water in us, gushing. Here is an image of life, of movement. If you’ve ever been mesmerized by rushing water in a brook or river, or stared at a waterfall or waves crashing, receding, returning, crashing again, you know how powerful an image this is of abundance. And Jesus locates this gushing spring not outside of us but inside, where we always have access. This spring is God’s life, renewing us.
What do you most wish you’d never run out of? If your answer is something material – food, money – it’s good to name it. If it’s something emotional – love, affirmation, attention – it’s important to be aware of what motivates you. God gives us no guarantees of provision in those areas. But spiritual commodities, like peace, healing, forgiveness, love, these all come with God’s living water in us, and they are always being replenished.
Today in prayer image that river of God-life flowing through you, dislodging all the debris of sin and hurt, and bearing it away, renewing and refreshing everything in its path. You might reflect on areas in which you feel empty or dry, and invite the river to flow to those places. If you feel a need of healing, invite the river to flow into that area. If you’re burdened by anxiety about the world or other people, invite the river to flow through those places, a visual prayer.
As we become more practiced at accessing the living water inside us, the spiritual gifts it brings may just make us more content about those material and emotional areas we worry about. After all, this living water is the river of God, which Jesus likens to the Holy Spirit. Our mouths may thirst, our stomachs may hunger – yet with this spring inside us, our spirits need never go dry.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
3-2-26 - A Man, a Woman, a Well
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The “Jesus encounter” before us this week is a rich story about a meeting between Jesus and a Samaritan woman on a hot and dusty noontime: So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
Let’s start with the who/when/where: Here is Jesus, alone. Here is a Samaritan woman, her ethnicity stated to let us know her status as a not-quite-Jew. Samaritans were descendants of Samaria, the original Northern Kingdom of Israel which, for a time, was united with Judea in the south. But when the leaders in Jerusalem (in Judea) decreed that all worship was to take place in the temple there, and no longer in the many other sacred sites in northern Israel, a division began which eventually separated Jews from Samaritans. The familial enmity persisted and deepened into a profound suspicion in which Jews considered Samaritans second-class citizens among God’s chosen people.
The time, we are told, is noon. Those with a cultural memory of movie Westerns, where big gun fights often take place at high noon, might anticipate a clash when we hear “noon” – and certainly we will see some verbal gun play in this encounter. But what might “noon” mean for the writer of John’s Gospel? The time when the sun is highest, when the most light possible shines? The most intense time of the day? A symbol of completeness, the mid-point of the sun’s journey across the sky? What does “noon” evoke for you?
Our location is a well, on land steeped in the history of Israel, a place the patriarch Jacob had given to his best-beloved son, Joseph. Jacob, remember, was the grandson of Abraham. God blessed Jacob after he spent a night wrestling with an angel. In that struggle, Jacob was given a new name: Israel, which became the name for the nation descended from Jacob's twelve sons.
The well might ring other echoes for John’s listeners: in the story of the patriarchs of Israel, at least three marriage matches are made at wells: Abraham’s servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac, meets Rebekah at a well; Jacob meets and falls in love with Rachel at a well; Moses meets his wife at a well.
So, should we expect a love story? Jesus often encounters women in the gospels, sometimes with intimacy – emotional, and even physical in the case of the woman who anoints his feet. This won’t be an encounter of romantic love, but a profound connection will take place.
Today, in your imagination, you might approach that well. Imagine the setting. See Jesus there alone. How do you feel about Jesus being in a place where you expected to be alone? What needs do you bring to this solitary place? What kind of conversation might you have? Let it unfold, and follow where it goes. Write down any exchange that happens.
Place, time, personae – the setting is ripe for something to happen. Something always happens when we meet Jesus.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
The “Jesus encounter” before us this week is a rich story about a meeting between Jesus and a Samaritan woman on a hot and dusty noontime: So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
Let’s start with the who/when/where: Here is Jesus, alone. Here is a Samaritan woman, her ethnicity stated to let us know her status as a not-quite-Jew. Samaritans were descendants of Samaria, the original Northern Kingdom of Israel which, for a time, was united with Judea in the south. But when the leaders in Jerusalem (in Judea) decreed that all worship was to take place in the temple there, and no longer in the many other sacred sites in northern Israel, a division began which eventually separated Jews from Samaritans. The familial enmity persisted and deepened into a profound suspicion in which Jews considered Samaritans second-class citizens among God’s chosen people.
The time, we are told, is noon. Those with a cultural memory of movie Westerns, where big gun fights often take place at high noon, might anticipate a clash when we hear “noon” – and certainly we will see some verbal gun play in this encounter. But what might “noon” mean for the writer of John’s Gospel? The time when the sun is highest, when the most light possible shines? The most intense time of the day? A symbol of completeness, the mid-point of the sun’s journey across the sky? What does “noon” evoke for you?
Our location is a well, on land steeped in the history of Israel, a place the patriarch Jacob had given to his best-beloved son, Joseph. Jacob, remember, was the grandson of Abraham. God blessed Jacob after he spent a night wrestling with an angel. In that struggle, Jacob was given a new name: Israel, which became the name for the nation descended from Jacob's twelve sons.
The well might ring other echoes for John’s listeners: in the story of the patriarchs of Israel, at least three marriage matches are made at wells: Abraham’s servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac, meets Rebekah at a well; Jacob meets and falls in love with Rachel at a well; Moses meets his wife at a well.
So, should we expect a love story? Jesus often encounters women in the gospels, sometimes with intimacy – emotional, and even physical in the case of the woman who anoints his feet. This won’t be an encounter of romantic love, but a profound connection will take place.
Today, in your imagination, you might approach that well. Imagine the setting. See Jesus there alone. How do you feel about Jesus being in a place where you expected to be alone? What needs do you bring to this solitary place? What kind of conversation might you have? Let it unfold, and follow where it goes. Write down any exchange that happens.
Place, time, personae – the setting is ripe for something to happen. Something always happens when we meet Jesus.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
2-27-26 - For God So Loved
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
If you ever had to memorize bible verses in Sunday School, chances are you can recite this one, John 3:16, favored by sports fans and poster-makers: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
This verse can evoke mixed emotions. It is a marvelous expression of God’s love for the world, a love so extravagant God willingly gave up his only son to save it. And it makes an extravagant promise – eternal life for those who believe in God’s only son. How we respond to this promise has everything to do with how much we feel the world is in need of saving, and how we feel about the “perishing” part.
For most of the Christian era, it has been generally accepted that people were lost in sin, for which the legitimate penalty was death without chance of pardon; and that God designed a remedy to meet the demands of that penalty in such a way that we could be spared it – by having his own son, the only perfect sacrifice, take on that death sentence for us. Theologians calls this “substitutionary atonement,” Jesus taking our place. Such a reading of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is supported by this passage. Jesus says, straight out, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
I cannot debate here the thorny question of whether humankind needed saving, or if God really ordained death as the punishment for sin. I will simply assert that a God who desires not to condemn but to save is a God worthy of our worship and trust. Condemnation lies at the heart of human sinfulness; our tendency to judge and condemn other people and ourselves is one of the most corrosive attributes human beings share. And so one of the most powerful verses in the New Testament for me is Paul’s declaration, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
To be reminded that Jesus himself said God is not interested in condemning anyone is a crucial corrective to centuries of judgmental, condemnatory, narrowly legalistic, rule-based teaching by the church. Condemnation is a reflection of our sinful nature; gracious love is a reflection of God’s nature, and ours as creatures made and redeemed in the image of our extravagant God.
Is there any pattern or behavior in your life for which you continually condemn yourself? Are there other people, individuals or categories, whom you routinely find yourself condemning? Perhaps today we might bring those people and patterns into the light in prayer, asking God to show us how God’s love might lift from us the burden of condemnation – whether we’re the condemned or the condemner. What strategies might you devise to become more aware of the action of condemnation in your life? Where might you invite the winds of the Holy Spirit to blow you into greater freedom and acceptance, of yourself and others?
“For God so loved the world…” Might we ask to be so filled with that gracious love that we find ourselves loving the world in God’s name? When all is love, we need not speak of perishing and saving, only of Life everlasting.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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 you ever had to memorize bible verses in Sunday School, chances are you can recite this one, John 3:16, favored by sports fans and poster-makers: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
This verse can evoke mixed emotions. It is a marvelous expression of God’s love for the world, a love so extravagant God willingly gave up his only son to save it. And it makes an extravagant promise – eternal life for those who believe in God’s only son. How we respond to this promise has everything to do with how much we feel the world is in need of saving, and how we feel about the “perishing” part.
For most of the Christian era, it has been generally accepted that people were lost in sin, for which the legitimate penalty was death without chance of pardon; and that God designed a remedy to meet the demands of that penalty in such a way that we could be spared it – by having his own son, the only perfect sacrifice, take on that death sentence for us. Theologians calls this “substitutionary atonement,” Jesus taking our place. Such a reading of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is supported by this passage. Jesus says, straight out, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
I cannot debate here the thorny question of whether humankind needed saving, or if God really ordained death as the punishment for sin. I will simply assert that a God who desires not to condemn but to save is a God worthy of our worship and trust. Condemnation lies at the heart of human sinfulness; our tendency to judge and condemn other people and ourselves is one of the most corrosive attributes human beings share. And so one of the most powerful verses in the New Testament for me is Paul’s declaration, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
To be reminded that Jesus himself said God is not interested in condemning anyone is a crucial corrective to centuries of judgmental, condemnatory, narrowly legalistic, rule-based teaching by the church. Condemnation is a reflection of our sinful nature; gracious love is a reflection of God’s nature, and ours as creatures made and redeemed in the image of our extravagant God.
Is there any pattern or behavior in your life for which you continually condemn yourself? Are there other people, individuals or categories, whom you routinely find yourself condemning? Perhaps today we might bring those people and patterns into the light in prayer, asking God to show us how God’s love might lift from us the burden of condemnation – whether we’re the condemned or the condemner. What strategies might you devise to become more aware of the action of condemnation in your life? Where might you invite the winds of the Holy Spirit to blow you into greater freedom and acceptance, of yourself and others?
“For God so loved the world…” Might we ask to be so filled with that gracious love that we find ourselves loving the world in God’s name? When all is love, we need not speak of perishing and saving, only of Life everlasting.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)