6-12-26 - Are We Disciples of Jesus Christ?

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Our gospel reading this week has Jesus sending his new disciples out on their first mission trip – to go to all the towns and villages he will visit, proclaim the good news that God is near, and heal the sick. Oh yeah, and cast out demons and raise the dead, as needed. And don’t take any baggage or money – just rely on the hospitality you find. If you’re not welcomed, hit the road and find some place that wants you. And if you get arrested or worse, don’t worry – God will be with you and tell you what to say.

How do we interpret these instructions in our day? Some Christ-followers take these words at face value and go out to share the Good News of God’s love. But more of us stay home, busy with work and family. Our “going in the name of Christ” mostly means going to church and maybe engaging in volunteer activities there or for other organizations whose values align with ours. Few of us are out blazing new trails, telling our stories, healing the sick. What do we do with these instructions for Jesus’ road warriors when we’re not out there and may have no intention of altering our priorities?

Let's start with the call to proclaim Good News. If we don’t know what’s good about this Good News, we don’t have much of a message to share. Jesus said the Good News was about freedom, release, forgiveness, healing, the inbreaking of God’s life into this world. Where have you experienced those things in your spiritual life? What stories flow from those experiences? With whom might you share those stories?

Then there’s the “doing” part – healing, raising, releasing, forgiving: 

• Where and when in your life do you offer those ministries that Jesus said were integral to living the Good News? 
• Is there anyone with whom you pray for healing? 
• Anyone who you remind of their status as beloved no matter what they’ve done or said, or not done or said? 
• Are there dead places you’ve helped bring God’s Life to? Any that are calling to you now? 

These are the “what’s” – proclaiming the Realm of God, healing the sick. Jesus also talked a lot about the “how” and the “how not.” Most notably he said not to take any resources with us, to rely solely on provision from God and from the people among whom we go. That is probably the most challenging part of Jesus’ teaching for me and folks I know. I don’t see us untethering ourselves from our financial and emotional security systems anytime soon. Are we any good at all to Jesus, or to the people who need to hear of his love?

Might we find small ways to do this, trying to get to know our neighbors or people around us who have acute needs, not offering gifts or advice, but simply as people, building relationships that can lead to community, and seeing where the Spirit takes us?

The harvest is still plentiful, and the laborers are still few. Folks around us are still harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus doesn’t ask us to go to them out of guilt, but out of excitement at the joy of being his followers, and anticipating blessings. Are we his disciples?

© 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.

6-11-26 - Wise As Serpents

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Adversity is part of the deal when we become ministers of the Gospel, especially when we invite people to re-examine long-standing beliefs and traditions. Jesus uses a potent image to warn his disciples about the challenges they will face as they proceed: “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles.”

The “wolves” for Jesus' disciples in this scenario are fellow Jews, in particular religious leaders benefiting from the status quo. Jesus knew they would oppose him and put obstacles in the way of his followers. He suggests meeting such opposition with a tricky balance of cunning and transparency.

It’s not so hard to fathom what it means to be “innocent as doves” – it means to have an agenda of peace and goodwill, be straightforward about your message and your aim. If we think of sharing our faith or introducing people to Christ as we’ve come to know him, it means being clear that this is part of who we are. If we’re sincere about building relationships AND about letting our spiritual selves be part of the encounter, we’re being innocent as doves.

Jesus’ exhortation to be “wise as serpents” is harder to parse. Where does being canny morph into cunning? Let's consider what attributes of serpents we might adopt as we move out in mission. One is their ability to move quickly and nimbly and with great flexibility. They are low to the ground, able to get where they need to be without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. So we might show up at opportune moments, and maneuver with grace around those who would shut us up or tell us to leave our religion out of it. We might be alert to opportunities to share our spiritual lives and quick about seizing those moments where appropriate.

Jesus was telling his followers that there would be resistance to their ministry which might well harden into persecution – and that no matter what, God would be with them, speaking his message through them: "When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you."

I doubt we need worry about being handed over to councils and flogged. We might be more apt to encounter resistance in the form of indifference or social pressure not to be “so religious." Whatever happens, Jesus’ counsel to be both winsome and wise, gentle and canny is as apt for us as it was for his disciples. We have a story to tell, an invitation to offer, an introduction to make – let’s not let anything stop us from making Jesus' love known.

© 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.

6-10-26 - Packing Light

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

It is packing season – summer vacations, weekend getaways; many of us will be taking down our suitcases and tote bags and deciding what to bring along and what to leave behind. What we pack depends largely on where we’re going – a weekend at the beach may call for shorts and t-shirts, while packing for a wedding can require five pairs of shoes.

And what if we’re packing for a mission trip? Jesus says, “Don’t. Just go.” His instructions to his disciples are perplexing: “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.”

He wants them to go out without any resources or safety net, to rely completely on the hospitality of those to whom they are sent. “Wait a minute,” they may have thought – “I thought we were bringing the gift. Now you want us to ask them to take us in and feed us, so we can preach the gospel to them? What’s that about?”

Maybe it’s about vulnerability. Maybe it’s about mutuality, not going to people with the resources or answers we think they need, but inviting them into relationship in which they can meet Jesus. Maybe it’s about allowing people to give to us, so that that we’re sharing on level ground, not from a place of power or control.

And for the ones who carry the Gospel to others, it is also an invitation to build the kind of trust muscles we need in God's service. Having no money or change of clothes, no toothbrush or even a staff to lean on is an invitation to lean totally on God’s provision and love. “Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?” we ask baptismal candidates. It is very hard to put our whole trust in anything, let alone a force we can know but not see or feel. But that’s the kind of faith Jesus invites us to grow.

When have you been in a situation where you had to rely totally on God? Where you couldn’t see what good was going to come, and could only trust that it would? These are trust-building opportunities.

It is not easy, but the testimony of those who live this way is that God comes through, again and again, often in completely unforeseen ways, often through the very people they thought they were there to help. When we break down the "us" and "them" and become just "us," all kinds of mutual giving becomes possible.

This story was about being sent on mission. Perhaps it is also an invitation to live more lightly always, less encumbered with stuff and space and security. Every day we have an invitation, right in our own lives, to simplify, to free up.

And every day we have opportunities to go to someone in the name of Christ, seeing what meals are provided to us when we don’t try to get them for ourselves. We don’t get to set the menu, but we will be fed. That’s the life of faith.

© 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.

6-9-26 - Know Your Audience

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

It’s the first principle of marketing: know your audience, then shape your message and target your approach accordingly. Jesus knew that, sending out his disciples on their first mission foray: These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

More than once Jesus declined ministry to people from ethnicities other than his own Jewish people (though he always relented, and thus expanded his market share…) His teaching and activities suggest that initially he saw his mission as correcting misinterpretations of the Torah, and inviting God’s chosen people back into alignment with God’s love and God’s truth. Perhaps reclaiming the whole world came later; perhaps there were stages.

Similarly, he told his disciples they were sent not to everybody, not to the “other,” but to their own people – the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Eventually, the Spirit made clear that outreach and evangelism to the “other” were to be hallmarks of mission for the church. But maybe in this early stage of training Jesus didn’t want his disciples distracted by cross-cultural chasms or barriers of language and religion. He wanted them to get used to proclaiming the Good News, healing the sick, casting out demons, even raising the dead, and to start with those who already knew the basics about the One Holy God of Israel.

The targeting was even more precise: they were to zero in on one "worthy" household, not broadcast their seeds to see where they might take root, but rather plant by hand as opportunities were given: Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

This last might sound rude, even hostile to us. Jesus may simply have been inviting them to develop a laser-like focus on building relationships with people with whom they shared a language, who might be open to the gift of Good News. The same often applies to us. It can seem easier to share our faith with total strangers than with those who look and talk like us, because maybe we don’t have to be as vulnerable. But more often than not God sends us to those with whom there are fewer barriers to connection.

Who do you know who needs to know Jesus’ love, to hear the Good News of freedom and grace? Pray about how you might go about offering that Good News. And if you are rebuffed, move on to someone else. That’s not the “anointed appointment” God is inviting you to have. The Spirit will lead us, as we ask and are willing, to those who are hungry for what we have to give.

© 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.

6-8-26 - Every and All

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Jesus set out to proclaim the Good News of God’s mission to restore and renew all of creation to wholeness, and to demonstrate that mission by healing every ill person he encountered. As he went, he also responded with compassion to what he saw – people who were harassed and helpless, rudderless, leader-less:  Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

The ones he encountered lived in poverty and fear, under the thumb of the Roman occupiers and further oppressed by their own religious leaders. Who do we encounter, who is harassed or helpless? Who is awakening your compassion? How might God be sending you to that person with a message of promise and life? People we meet may more often be harassed by the demands of wealth and stress than poverty, but many are also seeking direction, to be led to safety and green pastures and still waters. They are hungry for meaning, thirsty for purpose and the kind of love only God can give. We have access to these gifts – will we share?

When we read the Gospels with an eye to getting to know Jesus, a principle becomes evident: abundance and fullness. Five vats of water turned into wine, food enough for 5,000. And it applies to healing as well – Matthew tells us Jesus went to all the cities and villages, and cured every disease and every sickness. And he expected and equipped his followers to do the same: Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.

Perhaps Matthew is being hyperbolic, but if Jesus healed every disease and illness he encountered; and if he gave authority over disease and demons to his disciples; and if he empowered those disciples-turned-apostles with the Holy Spirit after his resurrection and ascension; and if we carry on the ministry of those apostles through an unbroken chain of laying on of hands In ordination and confirmation… then why don’t we heal every disease and every illness?

Such “why” questions can get us into trouble. So much in the realm of prayer is mystery, we can only speculate, based on our reading of Scripture and our experience. Maybe we see fewer healings because so often we don’t ask. And sometimes when we ask, it is with meagre faith. Faith needs to reside in the community; I’m not saying each person has to have a full and clear faith – but the community can and should. In my experience, communities that expect healing, that expect answers to prayer, often experience more. The more faith we bring to the exercise of healing prayer, the more healing we see, and the more powerfully the Good News is proclaimed.

Healing is fundamental to what it means to be Christians, apostles bearing witness to the power and love of God unleashed in the world through the Spirit of Christ. It is to be exercised by all of us, all the time, everywhere we go.

I long to see a congregation where it is normal to see people praying with each other at coffee hour, in the parking lot, in each other’s homes, by faith, with thanksgiving. Perhaps when every Christ follower exercises his or her faith in releasing God’s healing in the sick, the infirm, the despairing, all people will be healed. That’s how the Realm of God becomes visible. Through us.

© 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.

6-5-26 - Not Dead But Sleeping

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Our four gospels often tell the same stories, but sometimes the details are different. One change Matthew makes to this story probably first set down by Mark is quite dramatic. As Mark tells it, a synagogue leader comes to Jesus in a panic, saying, “‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” But in Matthew’s version the distraught father says, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” Dying or already dead? Did Matthew hear a different version of the story, or is he intensifying the miracle he is relating?

In both versions, Jesus gets to the house, after being diverted by the woman with the hemorrhage, and in both versions he sees life: When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute-players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.

This father suspected that his daughter's story was not yet over, and Jesus knew her life was not ended, that she was deeply asleep, perhaps in a coma. But what if she were already dead, as her father thought? Jesus raised Lazarus four days after burial; he raised a young man from his funeral bier. Did he raise this little girl or simply heal her? Is there a difference?

Here's a bigger question: Are we to pray for healing in the face of what looks like death? Sometimes… maybe more often than we do. Death is a reality of life, yes, and the power of God to heal is very real and very strong when communities exercise faith. When someone we know is gravely ill, we can ask the Spirit how to pray. If we feel a sense that physical healing can happen, invite the healing stream of God’s love into that person. I specify “physical healing,” because sometimes the healing a person receives is spiritual, preparing them for life after death.

Maybe it’s too limiting to talk only of healing through prayer – God also heals through medicine. I once read an article in the Washington Post about a young woman named April, catatonic for twenty years after having been diagnosed with a rapid and severe onset of schizophrenia. Then doctors discovered she also had lupus, a treatable autoimmune disease that was attacking her brain. As the article says, “After months of targeted treatments — and more than two decades trapped in her mind — April woke up.” Researchers are finding that autoimmune and inflammatory conditions may be prevalent in patients with various psychiatric syndromes – who can be helped with simple treatment. Sander Markx, the physician treating April said, “These are the forgotten souls. We’re not just improving the lives of these people, but we’re bringing them back from a place that I didn’t think they could come back from.”

That is the business we are in as followers of Christ active in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness: bringing people back from places no one thought they could come back from. We are called to see life, even in the face of death. We don’t always know the outcomes of our faith – that’s why it’s called faith; we don’t get a road map or guarantees. But we walk forward anyway. Whether it’s 20 minutes or 20 years, or in the life that follows this one, Life will win.

© 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.

6-4-26 - Your Faith Has Made You Well

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

This Sunday’s gospel story is a tale with many interruptions. It begins with Jesus inviting a tax collector to join him in ministry, which begets an interrogation from religious authorities about his holiness. As Jesus is making his defense, a synagogue leader pushes through the crowd to fall at Jesus’ feet, begging him to come to his house and heal his daughter, who has just died. Jesus agrees – and the whole crowd follows along, pressing in on Jesus and his disciples.

In this crowd is another person in desperate need of healing, but where the leader could be public about his request, this woman cannot let anyone know. For one thing, she is a woman, a person of little status in that culture. For another, she suffers perpetual bleeding. This not only makes her ill; it renders her ritually unclean – anyone touching her would also be made unclean and thus unable to go to the temple until they’d been cleansed.

So she sets out to “steal a healing,” going low in the crowd, making her way closer and closer to Jesus’ side, so she can just touch the hem of his cloak as he goes past:  Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.

Was this woman only driven by faith – or did she, like many of us, turn to the Healer only when conventional methods failed her? Twelve years with no improvement – and as Luke tells this story, we learn she did consult physicians who were unable to help. Was Jesus the last resort or her best hope?

I love the way this woman, like the distraught father, is determined to get what she needs, and how strongly she believes in Jesus’ power to heal her. I think of her as a base runner stealing third, trying to get to her goal undetected. Her faith is so strong she knows that the merest touch of his clothes will access the power that heals. And her faith is rewarded – Jesus turns, sees her, does not scold or reject her, but says “Take heart, daughter – your faith has made you well.” And at that instant she could feel she was well. What an additional gift to be told it was her own faith that effected her healing.

This is a great mystery – Jesus says these words to more than one person in the Gospels. It suggests that God does not so much do the healing as add power and love to the faith we bring. We want to be careful not to put too much onus on the faith of the person who is sick – in the other story in this week’s gospel it is the faith of the father for his daughter that is rewarded – but it seems there does need to be faith somewhere in the system. The more we bring, the more God has to work with.

Healing has been freely offered to us, a healing stream of living water always flowing in us and around us, into which we can step at will, in faith, in fear, in trust, in doubt. We don’t always see the fullness of the healing we desire in this life. Yet we see a lot more when we do what this woman did – just reach out and take hold.


© 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.

6-3-26 - Now That's Faith

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

In the first part of this week’s gospel passage, Jesus defends his relationships with people considered sinful, saying he had come into this world to save not the righteous, but sinners. This is a point he will make over and over again, directly and in parables. But before he has a chance to develop his argument to the religious leaders suspicious of him, he is interrupted by a religious leader who has great faith in him: While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples.

Now that is a person of faith. That is a person with clear vision of who Jesus is. I once led prayer with a group of children and asked them what they would like to pray for. Allie’s hand shot up. “I want to pray for my bunny.” “Sure,” I said. “What’s wrong with her?” “She’s still dead…”

Allie and this synagogue leader were way ahead of me in faith – they knew that Jesus’ power to heal could restore life even in those who had died. Jesus doesn’t challenge the man’s assumptions – he heads off with him to his home. But he doesn’t get very far before he is interrupted again, also by someone whose faith in him was stronger than most: Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

This woman’s faith is so strong, she doesn’t even need to talk with Jesus. She reasons that just touching his clothes will transfer healing power into her, and she is right – a moment later Jesus stops in the crowd and asks, “Who touched me? I felt power go out from me.”

Do you know anyone with faith like these two, who have the conviction that Jesus’ power can accomplish the healing they so badly desire? Would you think that person nuts or faithful?

What stops us from believing so completely? Often it is because the record of prayers not answered as we wanted speaks more loudly to our spirits than the record of God’s faithfulness and love. When we focus on what God has done and can do; when we wire ourselves to expect blessing as did this frantic father and long-suffering woman, we might find ourselves believing as powerfully as they do.

We’ll look tomorrow at the outcome of their faith. Today I invite you to consider where in your life you might step out on a limb of faith. What healing or reconciliation or blessing do you desire more than anything else? Maybe something you’ve lost hope in, that seems to have died? Something you have suffered with for twelve years or longer?

Can you imagine running after Jesus and asking him to stop what he’s doing and come to your house to restore that lost love? Or to sneak up on him in a crowd and invite his power and love to flow into you? What might happen with that prayer?

© 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.

6-2-26 - Tainted By Association

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

The story about Jesus calling Matthew from his tax booth to become a disciple is about as short as a story can be – two sentences. As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

Matthew (the author of the gospel, who was probably not the subject of the story) does not tell us why Jesus called this tax collector, nor does he give us a clue as to why Matthew gets up and follows without a word or question. Perhaps the gospel writer is less interested in these questions than in the impact this invitation had on the people around Jesus. This mixing with notorious “sinners” like tax collectors was getting Jesus a bad rep: And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”

Why should they care who Jesus eats with? Well, there was a strain of “holiness” teaching running through Jewish scripture and practice that asserted that even associating with anything or anyone unclean put your own purity at risk. This strain raises its legalistic head in ultra-conservative circles of any religion, and is usually accompanied by a conviction that the person doing the judging has no sin of which to repent. In the eyes of the Pharisees and scribes, constantly trying to discern whether he was a charlatan or the real deal, Jesus was tainted by his willingness to hang around the “sinful.”

But there is another way of thinking that we also find in the Hebrew bible, which invites “outsiders” to become insiders, encourages the faithful to welcome the stranger and alien, the “unwhole” and the impaired (who were not welcome in the temple courts). Jesus clearly saw there was more good to be done inviting the “unholy” into transforming relationship, and went so far as to suggest these were his true mission: But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

• Do you tend to categorize people as “good” or “bad?” 
• Which do you feel like on most days – the righteous or a sinner? 
• Have you been offered a friendship in which you experienced healing and a feeling of becoming more worthy of love? 
• Have you ever invited anyone else into such a transforming relationship? 

We are called to mercy, not a slavish devotion to rules and ritual. Our Good News proclaims that Jesus has passed by each one of us and said, “Follow me,” whether or not we felt worthy of that invitation. We become worthy as we walk with him.

© 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.

6-1-26 - Follow Me

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Congratulations – you have made it through the seasons and festivals and holidays that span Christmas through Easter to Pentecost, and have arrived safely at that long stretch we call “Ordinary Time.” From now until Advent, minus a few feast days, we will hear stories from Jesus’ ministry and teaching. We have an opportunity to get to know him better, and to explore our own callings within his ongoing mission.

This week’s passage from Matthew’s gospel contains two stories. Today we’ll look at the first, which is very short as stories go: As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

Brevity may be a virtue in writing, but this is a little too short. Why did Jesus call this tax collector? Had he had his eye on him for a while, or was it a spontaneous movement of the Spirit? In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus first calls four fishermen to be his disciples. John’s Gospel tells how Philip and Nathaniel got added to the corps. Did Matthew (named Levi in another gospel) come after them, or before? Did Jesus figure a financial guy would come in handy?

Perhaps a more important question is this: Why does Matthew get up without a question, a word, a goodbye, and follow Jesus? Like Peter and Andrew, James and John, he just walks away from his job, his livelihood, presumably his family. Had he already heard of Jesus, or seen him healing, or heard his teaching? Was he looking for a purpose? What was Jesus offering that these people were willing to walk away from their lives to go with him?

And that invites an even deeper question: What would it take for us to follow Jesus this completely? To be a disciple means to take on the discipline of a master. Are we willing to pattern our lives on the Way of Love that Jesus lived and taught?

Perhaps the only way to know the answer to that is to be able to say what it is we are yearning for in the depth of our hearts. When we know that what we yearn for is something that only God can satisfy, rather than all the things and people we chase, hoping they will fill the need, it’s not so hard to walk away. I am guessing that those people Jesus invited to join his mission knew he had something they needed and wouldn’t find anywhere else.

And walking away is not the only movement here. These people to whom Jesus said, “Follow me,” seemingly with no preamble or orientation program, were also walking to. They were walking to Jesus. And then they were walking with Jesus. If we think of it only as “walking away,” we may not want to leave our familiar circumstances and follow. When we experience the joy of walking with Jesus, into his always surprising, sometimes painful, transformative and transformational mission, we don’t even thinking about staying put, even when we don’t know where we are going.

© 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.

5-29-26 - With You, Always

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

It's one of the great promises God makes to us: God's presence, always. Jesus does not send us off alone with the charge to spread the Good News – he comes with us through His Spirit poured out on all people. Jesus’ last words on that mountain were, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Yet sometimes it can be hard to feel his presence. Here are a few ways I know of to draw on that promise:

Prayer – when we allow our minds to quiet and invite the Spirit to fill us, it is the Spirit of Christ who comes to us. The visually inclined can ask Jesus to show up in our imagination in some place and form that resonates for us, where we can talk and listen to him - and just hang out.

Praise – when we release our spirits in praise, as we sing or admire beauty or enjoy an intimate meal, we feel a presence in us and around us. That is Christ, joining our praises.

Eucharist – We offer these words and actions to remember him, because he said to… and remember means more than "recall." It also means to reconstitute the members of a body. We receive the life of Christ in those signs of his body and blood – and he has promised to be there with us.

In the Hungry and Forgotten – Jesus said when we feed and clothe and visit and tend to those in need, we do it for him. Doing ministry among people with obvious needs – and many assets, don’t forget – is a wonderful way to be with Jesus. Ask him in advance to show himself to you.

Ministries of Power – Jesus told his followers that when the Spirit came, they would do even greater works than they’d seen in him. When we pray for healing or reconciliation or exercise spiritual power in Jesus’ name, we are invoking his presence with us.

What are the ways you sense the presence of Jesus? Are there times you feel abandoned anyway? Those are normal, especially when a lot of things are going wrong. God invites us to pray through them and pipe up and say, “What happened to, ‘I will be with you always?’ Not feeling it…”

Always is a long time. We can experience Christ with us moment by moment, and expand our capacity to feel him in the challenging spaces. This is how we prepare ourselves to be with him. Always and for ever.

© 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.

5-28-26 - The Great Co-Mission

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Christians reply, “Okay, we have our orders - here we go to save some souls!” And there the church has gone, for over 2,000 years, carrying the Good News to the ends of the earth. In the late 1970s my church in New York held a multi-day preaching revival mission, keynoted by a Ugandan bishop, Festo Kavingere, come to save the souls of secular New Yorkers. The ends of the earth (from our Western perspective, anyway…) had come to us. The Great Commission is our job.

Yet when we understand God’s mission as a job, an order to follow, we lose sight of perhaps the most important word: “Co.” Co-mission means mission with. Jesus never intended his followers to take the hand-off from him and run with the ball on our own. He promised His Spirit would be in us, confirming the power of our words in signs and wonders. When the Great Commission runs off the rails it’s usually because the “co” got dropped and it became just mission. Our mission. My mission.

Co-mission means we are always partners in God’s mission, not recruiting God as a silent partner to bless our missions. When we are partners in God’s mission, we can be sure that we’re in God’s will and that good fruit is promised. God is always creating new life, restoring wholeness – so we can be sure God always has a mission for us to join. God seems, in fact, to rely on our joining in, or that thing doesn’t get accomplished. It’s like an electrical current needing a conductor to carry it – we’re the wire, folks, literally wired in to what God has already purposed.

How do we know when it’s God’s mission? It will resemble Christ’s missions. Look around you: Where do you see energy and passion that result in people being blessed, healed, fed, reconciled? There’s God’s mission. Where do you see hunger, fear, injustice or oppression? God may be inviting you to join God there.

Where do you see needs, frustration, wheels spinning? Maybe that’s a place where mission is being undertaken without God, like a wire disconnected from the current. Sometimes much of what I spend my time and energy on does not feel like God’s mission at all, but rather my attempt to help prop up old conveyor belts for human mission initiatives, my own included.

God’s mission is not about meeting needs, though needs are often met as we go about God’s mission. God’s mission is about bringing life to things that are dead or on their way there. God’s mission is about freedom and peace. We are about God’s mission when we feel our sails full of Holy Spirit wind; when we don’t know the route but know we’re going somewhere blessed.

• When do you feel you are “co-missioning” with God rather than “missioning” on your own? 
• When do you feel your passion and energy rise in ministry? Start noticing what gets your attention, and when your energy intensifies when you're taking about something. That's always a clue. 
• You might ask God to wire you into a mission, large or small – and to give you a clue that’s what’s happening by letting you see some fruit.

If God is always on the move, and if God needs us to carry the current of what God wants to accomplish… think how often God may want us just to show up and say, “Here I am. Use me.” That’s the Greatest Co-mission of all.

© 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.

5-27-26 - Making Disciples

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

It’s a muscular charge, the way Matthew renders Jesus’ last earthly instruction to his followers:  And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

Authority…. Go and make… Obey… Commanded…. This is not language of invitation and inspiration – or love. And it has caused some atrocious Christian behavior in world history. It’s not so hard to justify crusades and conquistadors when you take your marching orders from this verse – and this verse has had more influence than many in the bible. We even call it The Great Commission.

We can chalk some of this up to Matthew’s style – his version of stories and sayings often sound more legalistic, even aggressive than in other Gospels. Writing forty or so years after the events he records, in the face of persecution and unrest and competing factions in the Christian movement, he may have felt it important to emphasize Jesus’ authority and command. To those who wanted to reserve Jesus’ blessing to Jewish believers, he may have wanted to stress that these gifts were for all nations, that spreading the Good News is part of the church’s DNA. In a time when alternate readings of Christian revelation were already sprouting, he called people back to the teachings and commandments of Christ.

How do we take these words and live into them, aware of the harm and the good they’ve often caused? How might we rediscover the joy of sharing Good News in Jesus’ name, not holding back the blessing we have received?

Let’s ponder what it means to “make disciples.” It is not forcing a discipline on another, or manipulating allegiance. A disciple, one who takes on the discipline of a teacher, needs to do so by choice or she will lack the motivation to follow through. Those who chose to follow Jesus in his earthly ministry caught his passion and wanted to be a part of what he was doing. That’s how people still become his disciples. If we want to share in this mission of God, we will rediscover and share our own passion for the love of God and the Way of Jesus. Otherwise, we’re just going to church.

When someone has caught the passion for loving God, we invite him to be baptized (note the passive verb form... baptism is something we receive more than "do"), to mark this new commitment. We invoke the Holy Spirit to fill and equip her. And yes, we teach her all that Jesus has commanded, in all its counter-intuitive glory – to love enemies, value the poor more than our own families, seek peace over being right, to name a few. And we train him to walk in the Spirit, so that choosing to obey Jesus’ commands gradually becomes a desire, not just a duty.

Making disciples starts with us. Do you consider yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord? Why or why not? If you’re not, and you want to be, you can pray, “Okay, Jesus, I want to follow you… show me how.” And ask someone you consider to be a disciple already to walk alongside you in holy friendship.

Is there someone you know whom you might mentor in the faith, helping them discover discipleship? You can start by praying for God to bless that desire and give you openings.

Making disciples is a little more complex than “just add water” – but it is God’s work. We just get to help.

© 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.

5-26-26 - Doubt

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

The gospel reading set for Sunday is Matthew’s version of Jesus’ last encounter with his disciples: Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.

Some doubted? After running into the resurrected Jesus for several weeks, some still weren’t sure? Of course, it can be hard to overcome our belief in the impossible, even when it’s staring us in the face. An empty tomb and forty days were not enough for some, and still aren’t for many.

A healthy faith grows like a tree, its roots reaching deep into the soil of God-Life, accessing nutrients and building a stable base. It has a strong trunk able to support its growth. It reaches out branches toward God in praise, and toward other people in offering, allowing fruit and leaves to form. Yet no two trees grow alike. Each develops according to its situation, the nutrients available, sunlight and shade – and winds. Some trunks are sinewy and gnarled, strengthened by adversity. Some branches extend in long arcs, others divide and reach toward the light, others break of their own weight and crash to earth.

Doubt can work like a strong wind on our trees of faith, its pressure causing us to grow stronger. Doubt is a natural part of a living faith. It’s how we respond to it that makes the difference. If we acknowledge doubt when it surfaces and bring it into our relationship with God, it can add texture and depth to our faith. If we allow doubts to inspire us to lean harder on God, even to test, to say, “I don’t understand; show me,” they can actually deepen our faith.

But if we stay shielded from doubt by a black-and-white certainty, we can be like trees that grow tall and spindly – and easily toppled in a crisis. And if our doubts cause us to turn away from God, we don't fully experience the joys of that relationship, though God has not turned away from us.

How often do you engage doubts about God, about Jesus, about the power of God in the world or your life? What tends to trigger it? How do you tend to respond?

Today, can you bring one of those trouble areas into prayer? See what you discern in response.

As followers of the Risen Christ, we do not sign on to a set of doctrines. We enter into relationship with the multi-faceted triune God. There is room in God for our faith, our doubts, our love, our fears, and a whole lot more. Our faith is strengthened as we allow God to water our roots every day, as we allow life to prune our branches, as we withstand the winds and rain – and as we nurture ourselves to bear abundant fruit.

So we will be “…like trees planted by streams of water; bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.” (Psalm 1:3)

© 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.

5-25-26 - Trinity

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the “three-ness” of our One God. Why three? Why not two, or four, or one – which would have been so much easier to explain. Yes, we believe God is One, but Christians also assert that God is three persons within the One Godhead. Why three?

The shortest answer is, because Jesus said so. He spoke of his Father in heaven, he spoke of himself as Son of God, and he referred in personal terms to the Holy Spirit, who would be sent when he was no longer bodily present. And there were stories, like the voice heard at his baptism, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” and the Spirit descending upon him. Early apostles and thinkers, trying to interpret collected stories and teachings, had to wrestle with these references. We might say seeing God as triune was unavoidable, given how Jesus refers to these three distinct persons as God.

Unavoidable does not mean simple. It took centuries to sort out and articulate Christian doctrine about God, and some of the process was torturous, as it is any time we try to talk about the Unity and the Trinity of God (read the Athanasian Creed sometime…) On the one Sunday each year when we highlight not an event but a doctrine, preachers twist themselves into pretzels trying to clarify a spiritual mystery. Sun, ray, beam…. Orange, peel, juice… Mother, wife, sister… Water, ice, steam…. Or the image I suggested a few weeks ago: sea, water-fall and spray.

A good formula for the Trinity does not allocate different functions to Father, Son and Spirit, but affirms their sharing in the full life of God. It conveys distinction between persons and the unity of the whole – and so affirms the principles of differentiation and wholeness that are so important for human health and thriving. It communicates the core Christian belief that God is One and also more than One; that God is so big, God could not be contained as just One but exists in eternal relationship of persons.

We are invited to join this ongoing, active, relational life of God. The Christian life is not about assenting to a belief, but actively joining a relationship already in full swirl, and somehow richer when you and I join in. Some liken it to a dance, in which we are swept up, folded in, made whole.

What difference does understanding God as Trinity make to us? It gives us different ways to connect with God. Some relate to God as Spirit, unseen but powerful and present. Some connect better to God the Father, transcendent and holy, unknowable and yet perfect love. And some find their connection to the Son who left his heavenly home to enter our world as a human being, making God knowable to us.

Who do you find you most connect with in prayer? Have you ever consciously tried to address another Person of the Trinity just to see how you might experience God differently? You might try it today...

I will leave us with a great formulation written by my friend Willy Welch in a song for children:
God is one person, and he’s also Three.
God is a person, and He’s a family.
One, he is the Father; Two, he is the Son;
Three, he is the Spirit, and they’re never done.

© 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.

5-22-26 - The One-Two Punch

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Pentecost was not the first time the disciples received the Holy Spirit – it happened on Easter night, when Jesus showed up in a locked room, risen and whole, his wounds visible but healed. He came to commission and to equip: Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

One thing that mystifies me about this event is how little effect it seems to have had on the disciples. Jesus said, “I send you…” but a week later he shows up again, and they're still there, locked in fear. And though some of them took a foray out to go fishing on the Sea of Galilee, after Jesus’ ascension they went right back to that room, where they still were on Pentecost when the Spirit came in fullness.

I don’t know what that means theologically – for what it's worth, this event is recorded only in John’s gospel. But that progression is the way many Christians experience the Spirit. We receive the gift of the Spirit in baptism; it is renewed in us at confirmation, and every time we go to the communion rail, and often when we’re in prayer and ministry. We receive the gift of the Spirit many times in the Christian life.

Yet many Christians don’t feel that power and life, that giftedness for ministry. The life of the Spirit is in them, yet muted or dormant until it is released by request. It's like an unlimited bank account to which we’ve received the access code, but unless we use it, the riches just sit there – until it is released in a “Pentecostal” way, usually by someone specifically praying for us to be filled with the Spirit. This was the experience of such notable Anglicans as John Wesley and Charles Simeon, and healing ministers like Agnes Sanford, Francis MacNutt and Jim Glennon. They were living Christian lives, exercising Christian ministry, but, according to their testimonies, there was a dullness, a lack of life, until the Spirit was released in them.

Maybe we all need to do it in two steps. Trying to be a Christ-follower without the active participation of the Holy Spirit in, with, and through us is like trying to drive a car on fumes. We may get somewhere, but generally it’s by coasting. God wants to fill our tanks! God has places for us to go and people for us to bear Christ to, and healing he wants to do through us. We don’t need to do anything on our own steam – in fact, we can’t do much of lasting worth without the power of God working through us by the Spirit.

The Spirit of God brings us supernatural peace in unpeaceful circumstances, supernatural courage in the face of fearsome challenges, supernatural giftedness to do more than we think is possible. The more we are filled with the Spirit, the less room there is for illness or despair or anxiety. When I’m down or sick, I’ve learned to pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill me,” because it’s the only prayer I need.

If you would like a deeper filling of the Spirit, a releasing of God’s gifts in you, more vital and connected ministry, a greater sense of groundedness in your life, that’s the only prayer you need too. “Come, Holy Spirit – be released in me!” If you don't sense any change, go to someone you know to be Spirit-filled and ask them to pray that with you. Pentecost will come. Again, and again.

© 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.

5-21-26 - Upon All Flesh

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's primary reading is here.

“Flesh” is one of those words that mean one thing in churchy settings and another in the wider world. “Out there” it means bodily substance, plant or animal. In Bible World it refers to humanity, or human nature. This is how Peter uses it when, trying to interpret the furor at Pentecost, he locates this event as the fulfillment of a prophecy: “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.’”

We meet the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible: hovering at creation, inspiring artisans, speaking through prophets. References increase in the New Testament, especially in Luke’s accounts, which highlight the Spirit’s presence in prophetic utterances, Jesus’ conception, baptism and subsequent ministry. Jesus is often said to be “full of the Spirit” when miracles are recounted. The Spirit was not limited to Jesus, but Jesus, the Son of God in a human body, was the first human with the capacity to hold and wield the Spirit’s power full-strength. That’s why he could do such works that we think of as miracles, because faith and Spirit were undiluted in him.

I have come to believe that the chief goal of Jesus’ ministry with his followers was to help increase their capacity for holding and wielding the Spirit’s power, so that God’s life would be less diluted in them too. Far more than teaching them to “do,” He was equipping them to receive and live out the Life of God. If God wants this Life to be abundant in the world, God needs vessels with the breadth and depth to carry such love, such power.

What changed at Pentecost is that the presence of God was poured into human containers, ready or not. Jesus demonstrated that humankind could carry such divine power. Now it was up to those who were willing to have their capacity increased. And that could be any kind of person: “…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. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

What a prophecy of radical equality! So Paul can say with confidence some years after this event, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Anyone with the willingness to receive the life of God can be filled with the Spirit. Even people we’re not fond of. Even us.

• Who are some people in whom you discern the Spirit of God? Anyone on that list surprise you?
• What sort of people do you think would not be eligible?
• Do you feel worthy yourself?
• Are you interested in being filled with more God-Life?
• How might you allow your capacity for faith and filling to be expanded? What’s in the way? 

If Jesus was truly more about increasing his followers’ receptivity to the Spirit than about “training them for ministry,” what does that suggest about where the church can best put its energies? How might we better increase our collective capacity for living in the Spirit, as the Spirit lives in us? I don't think there is a person created by God whose capacity for the Spirit cannot be expanded.

Pentecost was only the beginning. We can live the rest of the story every day.

© 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.

5-20-26 - Beaujolais Nouveau?

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's primary reading is here.

After the wind and the tongues as of fire and the speaking in other languages, everyone in Jerusalem knew something was up with these Jesus people: All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

How right they were. The apostles may not have been high on spirits – as Peter says, “Please! It’s only 9 o’clock in the morning!” – but they were filled with the Spirit of God, whom Jesus had earlier likened to new wine. When asked why his disciples didn’t fast as much as others he said people don’t pour new wine into old wineskins. “If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matt 9:17)

New wine is an apt metaphor for the Spirit. New wine tends to be more potent than wine that has aged, and, being younger in the fermentation process, it is more expansive. Hence the risk of ruin to older, more brittle wine skins. New wine is less predictable, less controllable than more aged vintages. Perhaps many churches’ discomfort with the Holy Spirit comes from a desire for control. Perhaps the wine of the Church has aged a little too long, become too smooth to the taste, unlikely to offend anyone’s palate. The Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it was unpalatable to many.

We could use a dose of Holy Spirit fermentation. We could stand to have the Holy Spirit renewed in us, pushing what has become brittle in us and in our churches to expand and make room for the life of God. Otherwise we crack and break, the new wine goes running out, and we feel empty.

Every day we can ask for a deeper filling of the Holy Spirit. It can happen quite naturally as we say, “Come, Holy Spirit,” or “Come, Lord Jesus,” or as we pray in tongues or sing in praise or move our bodies in a posture of worship. And if there are certain spiritual gifts you crave – like healing, or faith, or more compassion, or boldness, ask for those gifts. The Spirit knows what gifts s/he wants us to have; it never hurts to ask for what we want to do the ministries we feel God is calling us to offer.

And if you feel the Spirit filling you to a degree that makes you uncomfortable, you can say so… I don’t think that happens often, though. Mostly we are filled to the capacity we have, until we are able to receive more.

We don’t have to worry about losing control, or beware the language of new birth. Some years ago, reading an obituary of actress Ann B. Davis, who played the housekeeper on The Brady Bunch, I was interested to learn that she was a charismatic Episcopalian: For many years after “The Brady Bunch” wound up, Davis led a quiet religious life, affiliating herself with a group led by [retired Episcopal Bishop William] Frey. “I was born again,” she told the AP in 1993. “It happens to Episcopalians. Sometimes it doesn't hit you till you're 47 years old.”

It can "hit us" at any age, in any denomination, especially if we’re open to it. And it happens more as we invite the Spirit to make that dimension of God’s life real in us.

© 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.

5-19-26 - Phrygia and Pamphylia

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's primary reading is here.

It’s the Pentecost Challenge: will the reader in church be able to pronounce all those Near Eastern place names? The passage in Acts – which details how a bunch of Galilean fisherman were suddenly able to speak languages they had never learned – sounds itself like another language. (Wouldn’t Phyrgia and Pamphylia make good cat names?)

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. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

Was the miracle in the speaking or in the hearing? Were the apostles speaking those languages, or could the hearers suddenly understand Aramaic as though it was their own tongue? Either way, people heard the Good News about “God’s deeds of power” in their own language and could choose for themselves if they wanted to follow the Way of Jesus. Luke tells us that 3,000 were baptized that day.

In what language do the people around you need to hear the Good News? Perhaps a first question is this: to whom do you feel called to share the Good News of God’s love? We're often uncomfortable sharing our spiritual selves with friends and family... but what about acquaintances or clients or co-workers, or people hanging out in a park. Maybe your kids’ friends who populate your kitchen, or that person at the dry cleaners who looks so sad all the time. It might even be someone at church who understands the rituals and maybe not the love they're meant to express.

Anyone we might talk with about “God’s deeds of power” has a language in which they are most comfortable. “Church talk” and Christian jargon are increasingly foreign tongues to many who lack context to comprehend even words like “hymn” and “scripture” and “gospel,” not to mention allusions like “Good Samaritan” or “walking on water.” What universal terms convey love and grace and acceptance and healing from shame and addiction and dis-ease, mental and physical? What languages do you hear around you?

A spiritual exercise for today: Get settled and centered in God’s presence, however you best do that. Then ask, “Is there someone you want me to tell about your power and love?” Wait and see what names or faces come up. If one does, ask, “What language do I need to speak to reach that person?” It’ll come.

We may not have a miracle of Pentecostal proportions, but Jesus did promise that his followers would have the words they need to share the Good News. The words that are given to you will emerge from your own stories of how you have experienced God’s deeds of power and love.

If you don’t feel you have… there’s another prayer.
And if you know you have – don’t you know someone who would like to hear that story?

© 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

5-18-26 - When the Spirit Comes

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's primary reading is here.

Normally, Water Daily reflects upon the Gospel reading appointed for the following Sunday. But the principal text for the Day of Pentecost – this Sunday – is from Acts. So we will focus on that story, and address a Gospel passage on Friday.

Pentecost is one of the Big Three festivals of the Christian calendar, along with Christmas and Easter. Some call it the birthday of the Church; some the one Sunday when we focus on the Holy Spirit. It is the day the promised power, peace and presence of God came to dwell in God’s people, igniting and initiating the Jesus movement in which we live today.

Jesus’ followers stayed together during the forty days of his resurrection presence. They watched him ascend into heaven, and then returned to the city, where he told them to wait for the gift promised by the Father, to be "clothed with power from on high." I doubt they knew what that meant, but they continued to wait and to worship, and to stay out of sight of the authorities. Pentecost was a major Jewish feast fifty days after Passover, and they were together in the upper room celebrating it when things got weird: 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.

Maybe this “big entrance” by the Holy Spirit has caused some to expect strange manifestations whenever the Spirit shows up. Certainly there can be phenomena like speaking in tongues, or prophesying, or weeping, or laughing hysterically, or feeling tremendous heat. We read about these in the New Testament and hear about them in churches today. Often, though, the Spirit comes quietly, filling us, rendering us silent in awe and wonder and gratitude. Perhaps how the Spirit comes depends on what God’s purpose is in a given situation.

It seems God had a big purpose for that festival day in Jerusalem. Did God schedule this outpouring of the Spirit for this holiday, when the city would be full of pilgrims from other lands? When the disciples’ sudden, inexplicable ability to speak to visitors in their own languages would impart the Gospel about Jesus to the most people and create the maximum stir? That can go on our list of questions for God. A stir was caused. Jesus’ followers were released into a boldness and effectiveness they had never shown before. And a Jewish reform movement that might have been suppressed or died out of its own accord became a phenomenon which forever changed the world.

Has it changed us? The Spirit is God’s promised gift to all who follow Christ. Our liturgies affirm that we receive the Spirit in baptism, in confirmation – indeed, at every celebration of the eucharist. Yet we need that gift to be released in us. If you would like to be more centered on Christ, more discerning of God’s leading, more effective in ministry, pray for the Spirit – already in you – to be further released today. Sometimes that works better when someone else prays it for us. It is the simplest prayer, and the most profound, and the only one we need: “Come, Holy Spirit.”

Then wait and notice. You might get sensations or images, or maybe you’ll feel nothing then and notice later. It’s God’s timing… and our willingness to receive. Come, Holy Spirit.

© 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.

5-15-26 - Redirecting Our Gaze

You can listen to this reflection here. Here is Sunday's reading from Acts.

We often look for God in the last place we saw evidence of God. So it’s not surprising that the disciples were gazing up towards heaven as Jesus disappeared into the clouds. But just as at the tomb on Easter morning, when they were seeking Jesus’ body, two “men in white” appear once more to set them straight: …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 towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards 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.”

In other words, “Don’t just stand here! Do what he told you to do.” And what he had told them to do was to wait in the city until they had been “clothed with power from on high.” So they did - Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying…. constantly devoting themselves to prayer.

Prayer is what they were doing when the Spirit came in power upon them ten days later – and after that, they were pretty much always on the move.

When we have an intense spiritual encounter or experience, we often want to rest in that, stay with it, try to get another "hit." And yet God almost always calls us forward, not back. The Spirit is moving, all around us, often in places and people we didn’t think to look. Part of our growth as apostles is learning to discern the activity of God, to note it, celebrate it, and – often – to join it.

Where have you seen evidence of God’s action lately? In whom? Did you read about something, or see something on the street, or have a conversation that struck a spark in you?

What if we made a practice, between now and Pentecost, of writing down each day one or two places or times when we became aware of the Spirit’s action? That would be a wonderful exercise to sharpen our spiritual senses.

If we want to see God, prayer and scripture and worship are part of the picture - but God is also out and about. What if we focused on the God-sightings, and prayer, scripture and worship became the ways we celebrated them and became inspired to explore some more? That would energize the whole church!

© 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.

5-14-26 - Testifying

You can listen to this reflection here. Here is Sunday's reading from Acts. 

Jesus said to his disciples, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." 

I like to joke that many Anglicans seem to be enrolled in a Witness Protection Program, staying as low-profile as possible about their faith and spirituality. That can happen when we focus more on church than on Christ. Jesus calls those who would bear his name in the world to bear witness to his story, and to the power of God he taught and lived. And witnesses testify.

Maybe “testify” is a problematic word; a witness in a court room does not always tell her story voluntarily. So let’s leave that formal, sterile, judicial context and look at how we talk about things we’ve witnessed in every-day life. An amazing encounter with wildlife. That hysterical cat video. The adorable thing our granddaughter said. The 45-minute back-up with no known cause we endured. The movie we just saw. The new restaurant we love. We testify all the time.

Can we talk as easily and naturally about our encounters with the Holy when we have them? Can we talk about our outreach activities and worship experiences and the joy of community? Can we talk about Jesus and his story, and how it interweaves with our stories… or better yet, how it frames our stories? Our faith is not meant to be one strand of our life, woven in with all the other strands – it is meant to be the frame in which the tapestry sits, the frame that holds and contains our work and relationships and play and rest. In other words, our “faith-life” is our life, not part of our life.

Bearing witness is not even something we have to “do.” We need only allow God to do it through us. This Witness Program ships with a built-in power supply. Jesus says in Acts: “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.”

And in Luke: “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."

That power came in fullness at Pentecost. We receive it at baptism, confirmation, ordination - and any time we exercise faith in the name of Jesus. If we find ourselves in a situation that could get “spiritual,” we can say a quick prayer: “Okay, God, you promised power… give me the courage and the words.” Ordinary conversations and encounters can become charged with holiness and result in amazing outcomes.

Exercise your faith in prayer if called on. Tell a story that is meaningful to you. Talk about what Jesus means to you. We can do that in ways that give people space for their own experiences and views. A witness is not there to persuade, but to tell a story that is true and authentic.

"You will be my witnesses...to the ends of the earth,” said Jesus. From the perspective of Jerusalem in 33 CE (give or take...), we are the ends of the earth. If we’ve experienced blessing in God, let’s testify.

© 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.

5-13-25 - The End - and the Beginning

You can listen to this reflection here. Here is Sunday's reading from Acts. 

Tomorrow is Ascension Day, a major church feast day, though ignored by most churches unless they are named Ascension. Maybe this holiday gets less airplay because the event it commemorates is so odd. What shall we make of this dramatic departure of the already quite dramatically risen Christ? It's hard to imagine such a bizarre event, which only Luke records in any detail, in both his gospel and in Acts.

Yet this is the final scene in the incarnate life of the Son of God, and tells us how he gets back to the place from where our story says he started: the heavenly precincts, where from now on he will be seated in glory at the right hand of the Father. (Which prompted a vexing question a child once asked me, "Who is on the left side of God?").

Jesus hung out for forty days after his resurrection, the Gospels tell us, instructing and inspiring his followers to believe the impossible, and to live as though they believed it. It’s hard to convince the world all things are possible with God while holed up in fear in a room in Jerusalem. So Jesus kept showing up and going through the lessons again. Even so, they didn't quite get it. Gathered with him just before he takes his final bow, they still ask, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Have they heard nothing he’s said about God being among them to heal the sick, raise the dead, proclaim restoration to the poor? Do they still not understand his mission, or theirs, to make visible the power of God to restore all creation to wholeness? Once again, Jesus tries to explain it: He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 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.”

Why do we so often need to be reminded of where we’re supposed to be headed? Why do we so often let our focus narrow to the small matters of our own lives, forgetting where we stand in the big picture of God’s Life? How might we be regularly redirected to God’s mission through us?

We are redirected by remembering that it is all about the Holy Spirit’s power working through us. Whenever we feel confused or discouraged or in doubt, we return to this central promise: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you."

We need to be open to receiving that power, that presence of God with us; open to exercising that power in Jesus’ name – not our own power, but God’s power empowering our proclamation, our works of restoration and healing, our testimony.

Jesus’ disciples were told they would be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The book of Acts shows us how closely the spreading of the Good News followed that trajectory. Our chapter in that book will tell even more amazing stories as we let the Spirit work through us.

© 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.

5-12-26 - Jesus' Unanswered Prayer

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

How many people have stepped away from God because a prayer they desired with all their heart was not answered? If we’re going to put our trust in a being we cannot see, hear or touch, whom we can only imagine based on reports of others and our own subjective experience, hadn’t that all-powerful being at least deliver the goods? And it seems that God does not always deliver the goods we want.

We might do well to remember that even Jesus, the sinless Son of God, who dwelt in God’s holy presence since before time began and dwells there for eternity, had unanswered prayers. There is one in this Sunday’s gospel. Jesus prayed, "Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

In case you hadn’t noticed, the church that is meant to be Christ’s One Body in the world is not one. In fact, it is as divided as it has ever been. Most people on one side or another of its many divides would say that those on the other sides distort or misinterpret Jesus’ legacy. Many would offer scriptural support for their position. Unfortunately, unity rarely supercedes the human need to be right.

So, did Jesus pray a dumb prayer? Why has it not been answered in a way that matched the deep desire of his heart? Why has loving each other been so hard, even for the followers of the Lord of Love, the Prince of Peace?

Perhaps it is because we remain human. Not even the unlimited power of God can prevail against a human will that is not yielded to God. That is the way God set it up. God’s power is unlimited – except where God has chosen to limit it. If we have free will, the will to choose God or not-God, then God has voluntarily bound God’s own hand. If our prayers depend on the will of another person to choose one way or another, their efficacy will depend on how much that person is open to the influence of the Holy Spirit.

• What prayers of yours have felt fruitless? 
• Are you trying to pray around someone rather than for them?

This prayer of Jesus that his followers would be one, protected from the corrosion and dis-ease that division cause, can only be answered in our choosing differently. When we invite God to bring our wills for his church into alignment with his will, we might begin to seek reconciliation with others who claim to follow Christ. Seeking reconciliation is not the same thing as agreement. Too often we start by trying to resolve differences rather than by building relationships.

How might we work toward the fruit that Jesus prayed for, that fruit of unity and love by which he said the world would know his followers? Is there someone who believes differently than you to whom you might offer relationship?

In the fullness of God's time, Jesus’ prayer has already been answered. Its completion in this world will become more visible as we align ourselves with that prayer and live into it. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where true love is, God is there.

© 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.

5-11-26 - Eternity Starts Now

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

As John’s Gospel renders the account of Jesus’ last night with his disciples before his arrest and execution, he took a LONG time to say goodbye. The “farewell discourses” comprise five chapters in John. Much of that is Jesus’ final teaching about what he’s been up to, and what (who…) is coming next. These words ground the development of our doctrine of the Trinity, God as Three distinct “persons” in One unified whole.

Finishing his remarks to his followers, Jesus turns to his heavenly Father, in what scholars call “the high priestly prayer.” This text inspired the Church’s understanding that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, existed before all things were made, “was with God and was God” always and forever. Jesus says, “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”

In the presence of God is where Jesus began, and where he returned after his mission in the world was completed. In the presence of God is also where Jesus’ followers will dwell eternally. Jesus prayed, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

We may think that eternal life knowing God, dwelling in God’s presence, happens when we die. But our Good News proclaims that, in Christ, God came among us. Our Good News is that when Jesus returned to the Father, God sent the Spirit of Christ to be with us always, at all times, to the end of the ages. Eternity has already begun. It is now.

We can forget that, aware of so much in our lives and our world that is not of God. Our audacious claim as Christians is that the Life of God is already, is now, is here. Indeed, we help bring it more fully into being each time we reflect that Life more than we do the life of the world. Life in this world is among the things that will pass away. Life in God, which we enter here and now, is forever.

• What or who in your life today reminds you that you are already living in the eternal Life of God?
• What or who distracts you from that heart-knowledge?
• How might you exercise your faith to affirm that God is here, releasing the matters that make you fear God is not?

Jesus completed his work. He released into this world the Life of God. It cannot be re-contained or suppressed. But to many it can remain invisible – unless we make it known by how we live God-Life here and now. Where will you make that Life known today?

© 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.

5-8-26 - Swimming In Love

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Language fails when we try to convey the overlapping unity of love and persons in God, a triune swirl of inter-relatedness in which we are invited to swim. Jesus, at least as his remarks are rendered in John’s Gospel, seemed to have almost as much trouble making it clear: “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Where does Jesus end and the Father begin? Where do we end and Jesus begin? Are we in the Father and in Jesus, or vice versa, or (g) all of the above? The answer is (g)… and maybe (z). God is love. Jesus is love. We love and are loved, and so are drawn into the eternal and present Love of God.

When two people fall in love, there can be a period where identities merge. We want to fuse, to lose ourselves in the glorious other, whose every word and movement is wondrous. This stage of in-love-ness is intoxicating – and it’s not forever. If the relationship is to grow and strengthen, we need to differentiate again, to carry our own identities, loving and respecting the other person, being with but not needing to be one with.

Does Jesus suggest we lose our identity when we let the love of God become a part of us, and we of God? I don’t think so. The Christian tradition celebrates that each of us is unique and precious. Our self does not get obliterated as we enter the stream of God’s love. Rather, being loved for who we are allows us to become more fully who we truly are, shedding the inauthentic carapaces and personas we grow to protect ourselves and cope with adversity.

We don’t lose ourselves swimming in God’s love any more than we do when we swim in the vast, refreshing ocean. We become more fully alive. We are contained in our bodies, and yet somehow one with a primal element. We exult as we move in that unbounded water, which allows us to dive and dance and turn somersaults and ride waves, all kinds of things we can’t do on land, just as dwelling in God's love enables us to do and think and say and offer all kinds of things we can’t in our natural selves.

Today in prayer let's go swimming. Imagine a waterfall flowing into the sea. Let’s say the sea is the Love of God, the waterfall is Jesus, and the spray that rises as they meet is the Holy Spirit. This sea is always being renewed, refreshed, replenished, the water all one, so you cannot distinguish sea from waterfall from spray. Imagine jumping in. How does the water feel? How does it make you feel? How do you want to move in it?

• If this is God’s love, how does it feel to be immersed in love? 
• How would you share the water with others? 
• How would you invite others to join you in that pool? 

Swimming in the love of God allows us to access the source of Love that has no limit, so that we love out of the reservoir of God’s infinite love, not our own limited supply. As we approach the summer “swimming season,” I hope you’ll have lots of opportunities to be reminded of the water, the love, in which we were reborn, in which we will swim always. Splash!

© 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.