You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
Earlier this week we explored Jesus’ saying that he was the gate of the sheepfold, the means of entry, and about sheepfolds in Jesus’ day: scholars think they often had no gate. The shepherd, when the flock was safely enclosed, would lie down to sleep in the opening as a way of securing the flock. Thus, the shepherd became a gate.
Putting aside the amusing image this prompts of a sleepy shepherd trampled one morning by hungry sheep going out to pasture, it helps make sense of Jesus’ words. The shepherd is the one who leads the flock in and out of the fold. Jesus says those who enter the Life of God by way of relationship with him will come in and go out and find pasture.
It occurs to me that sheep don’t get sustenance in the sheepfold – for nourishment, they have to go out to pasture. What they get in the sheepfold is rest and security. What does that say to us as churchgoers? Often people say they go to church to be fed. What if instead we saw church-time as a time to rest and recharge, be renewed, safely enclosed in the fold with the rest of our flock – and then sent back out to find God’s nourishment in our lives the rest of the week?
What if we were fed in spiritual conversation with other people, by sharing our faith stories with people who aren’t in our “fold?” What if God wants us to be "pasture" by which others to be fed? The going out becomes as important as the coming in, maybe more.- Why do you go to church? What do you seek there?
- What do you seek when you leave and head back to your “life?”
- Where do you, or where might you find spiritual nurture in the week between worship services?
- Where might you offer it?
In prayer today, we could ask, “God, what pastures are you leading me to in my life right now? Who might you be asking me to provide a feast for?” See what occurs to you, or who crosses your path.
We don’t come and go alone. The Great News is that the Shepherd goes with us, coming in and going out. The Shepherd leads us to green pastures and the Shepherd leads us home again. We don’t have to search for pasture – we only have to learn the voice of the Shepherd and follow 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Are sheep responsive to sound? I don't know, but Jesus – who must have known more about sheep-keeping than I do – says that sheep know the shepherd’s voice:“The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”
This passage evokes for me Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter morning. Deep in grief at finding the tomb empty, assuming the body of her beloved lord has been stolen, Mary has a conversation with someone she takes for a gardener. It is only when he says her name that she recognizes Jesus by his voice. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”
I can’t claim to know Jesus’ voice, but I have had enough prayer conversations with him that I believe I recognize his voice – by content and tone. When I get a response in prayer that is simple and profound and sometimes a little sharp, something I’m pretty sure I would never have thought of, I attribute it to Jesus. And if it bears good fruit, I feel that hunch confirmed.
One way to describe spiritual growth for Christ-followers is to become familiar with the Shepherd’s voice, so that we are led to green pastures and still waters, to fruitfulness and refreshment. Christ’s leading, which comes to us through the Holy Spirit, can also steer us away from ravines and precipices. As we learn to trust God’s guidance, we also become more hip to false shepherds who try to lead us away from the One who makes us whole.
How do you experience Jesus’ voice in your life?
Through scripture or prayer? In worship? Inner promptings? Other people offering interpretations?
If the very idea of “hearing” Jesus seems strange to you, consider a prayer like this: “Okay, Jesus, if you call your own sheep by name and lead them out, call me in a way I can understand.” And then see what happens over the next hours or days or weeks… check in periodically with that prayer and see if your relationship is changing at all. It’s not up to the sheep, it’s up to the shepherd… yet it helps if the sheep are open to possibilities.
Jesus had to watch a lot of people who drifted into his community be drawn away by fear-mongering leaders who warned people not to trust him. I imagine it pained him to watch people come close to the love he offered and then wander off.
But Jesus never forced anyone to follow him, and he doesn’t now. He only calls to us, with open arms. Do we hear with open ears?
© 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Someday maybe I'll understand the Easter season lectionary. After a few Sundays exploring the events of Easter Sunday, on Easter 4 we leave behind the resurrection of Christ and jump to one of the “I am the good shepherd” passages. “Good Shepherd” sounds comforting. But as we read these passages, we find they are anything but cuddly. Thieves, rustlers, predators and unreliable hired men abound.
It turns out that Jesus is talking – as usual – about the corrupt and oppressive religious leaders whom he feels misrepresent God and choke the spiritual life of their people: “Very truly, I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”
Is it any wonder they wanted to kill Jesus? He compares them to thieves and bandits who would rob people of their assurance of God’s love and mercy. Of course, comparing the people to sheep is not the most flattering allusion either.
And it is easy to get tangled in the words as John presents them; isn't Jesus the shepherd? But later Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
My literal mind has trouble imagining Jesus as a gate; how can a person be a gate? Thankfully, Water Daily is a community, and after I posed that question a few years ago, a reader replied that not all sheepfolds in Jesus’ time had gates – often the shepherd would himself lie down in the opening to keep the sheep in and predators out. This really opens up Jesus’ perplexing words – and expands our sense of his role in our lives as we let him take up more space in us. What is he protecting us from – and for?
This image of Jesus as gate also makes me think of him as one who creates entry space for contact with God – a threshold we cross to gain access to the Holy One, the Creator of all. After all, we affirm that it is by Jesus’ holiness, not our own, that we have access to the Father. He’s our way in… and out. - Does Jesus function that way in your spiritual life? Is he a threshold you can cross into the holy, a space-creator?
- Have you suffered from poor shepherds in the past, who made intimacy with God more difficult? Perhaps you can pray for them, and even forgive. That makes space too.
- Do you think you need Jesus in order to get closer to God? Do you want him in that between-space?
My prayer for today is, “Jesus – if you’re the gate, show me how I can get closer to the fullness of God by getting closer to you.”
© 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
The post-resurrection Jesus had astonishing properties – he could appear in locked rooms and disappear at will. Perhaps it wasn’t so much “appear” and “disappear” as “materialize” and “dematerialize.” After all, the risen Jesus was spirit – not a ghost, he points out, but spirit. He seemed to be able to take on substance, or matter, when he needed to be seen. (Perhaps he had those properties before resurrection as well… His little stroll on the Sea of Galilee and transfiguration on the mountain offer tantalizing hints into the physics of Jesus’ incarnation…).
Jesus pulls this disappearing act in several resurrection appearances, the Gospels tell us. He says to Mary in the garden, “Don’t hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” (John 20:11-18) He did hang out and have breakfast with the disciples on the beach after the miraculous catch of fish (John 21), but his interview with Peter implies his coming absence. In Luke’s account of the upper room appearance, he talks about sending the Spirit to them (Luke 24:36-49). It is clear he’s not sticking around.
Jesus was not back to stay. His post-Resurrection, pre-Ascension walkabout had a purpose, to reinforce the teaching he’d given his followers for three years, and to prepare them to receive the Holy Spirit, who would kick the whole operation into gear. And here we are, more or less still in gear, two thousand-plus years later.
We tend to want to keep what feels good, to rest in it. And that is not the way of God. Jesus always seems to be moving on to the next place we will find him. Maybe our wiring is too weak to withstand the frequency of God’s presence all the time. I know I have trouble abiding with Jesus for even a little while, though there is something about that presence that I crave. Maybe Jesus’ appearances, whether in those 40 days, or in our prayers and worship and ministry and community now, are always brief and for a purpose. Maybe he leads us on to new ways to experience him and new ways to make him known to the world, because there are so many who do not know him and need a multiplicity of on-ramps.
Where did you last experience the presence of Christ? How long did that experience last? Did you feel ready for it to end? If you would like to experience the presence of Christ, and aren’t aware of having done so, here’s a prayer for today: “Risen Lord – I want to know you, to feel your presence, your love. Open my eyes, ears, heart and hands, and find me where I am today. Amen.”
I don’t know what will come of that prayer, but you can pray and release it. God will answer in God’s time and in a way that works for you. I don’t believe God hides from us. And whenever you do encounter that presence, tell someone! Those disciples got up from the table and ran seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the story, only to find that Jesus had showed up there the same evening.
I don’t think anyone, even the most prayer-soaked mystic, experiences God’s presence in a constant, unbroken way. Jesus did make a promise, though, that we can rest in, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the ages.” At the end of the ages, we’ll be able to sit in his presence full time. For now, we take the moments and string them together like pearls of great price.
© 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
“Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past…” So begins a well-loved prayer from the Episcopal service of Compline, or “night prayer.” It comes from this week’s Gospel story. The two disciples do not recognize Jesus, despite his insight and authority on sacred history, but they want to continue conversation with him, to remain in his presence. Even as they reach their destination, and he is preparing to walk on, they urge him to stay: As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…
Something about Jesus’ resurrection body must have been different – in nearly every post-Easter appearance we read in the Gospels, people who knew and loved Jesus did not recognize him until he did or said something familiar. At the supper table that night in Emmaus, when Jesus took the bread, blessed, broke and gave it to them, they suddenly saw who it was they’d spent the afternoon with. How often had they seen him bless and break bread – when they fed 5,000 people on a hillside with five loaves and two fish; when they’d gathered only a few nights earlier for the Passover feast. Such strange words had accompanied that action: “Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me.” The familiar action made manifest the holy.
Breaking bread is a universal rite of community, whether at mealtime, to celebrate a special occasion, to reconvene family or reconcile the estranged. It became a central act for Christian communities, not only the Eucharistic blessing, breaking and sharing, but also as a common meal celebrating the people gathered.
At our Eucharistic feast, the bread is a symbol of Christ’s body. It is broken so as to be shared, given away, as his life was. So, too, the community (also the Body of Christ) is broken apart after worship to feed the world. As a friend once described the eucharist: “You give us this little piece of bread, and we give it away all week, and come back for more.” Yes. And when next the Body comes back together, reconstituted, there is a new loaf of bread to be broken. And on it goes, this breaking and making whole in Jesus’ name.
With what do you associate the breaking of bread? What are the holy feasts in your life? They may not be centered around worship, but around family or holidays or celebrations – picnics, banquets.
Do you think of Jesus when the bread in those feasts is broken and shared? Such moments can become a quotidian reminder that his presence is a promise to us, a daily invitation to enter his brokenness and his wholeness.
Maybe you would like to make that Compline prayer part of your end-of-day practice: Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.
For the sake of his love, he has already granted that prayer. That way is ready for us to walk in.
© 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Do you ever read guidebooks about a place before you visit it? I try, and find I can’t really retain the details – it’s too abstract, too flat. Once I’ve been there, though, I enjoy going back to the book, to let its information fill out what I’ve now seen and experienced.
The Bible can be that way – a whole lot of information and other people’s stories, until we experience God for ourselves and have a personal context from which to process those writings. Perhaps that’s how the Scriptures were for Jesus’ followers before the resurrection, sacred writings that spoke of God’s activity in the past and promised some future restoration that they couldn’t imagine. But after Jesus rose from the dead? Ah, now, let’s read that prophecy again.
Is this what the two disciples on the Emmaus road experienced when the stranger walking with them began to teach them? Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
Later they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” With interpretation, all those words and stories of God suddenly made a kind of sense. They were leading somewhere. They had their own validity in their original contexts and communities – yet now they also had a new interpretation, both broader and narrower, pointing to what God was up to in the mission of Jesus Christ on earth.
Guidebooks are great, but we often benefit from having a guide as well, someone who’s been further up the road to help us interpret the path we’re traveling. In Jesus, those sojourners found a Guide who could help interpret the Guidebook. In the Holy Spirit, we get the same gift; as we read the Scriptures alone or with others, aided by Christ’s Spirit, they come to life, and bring life to us.
Who has helped you better understand parts of the Bible that you’ve read? Who have you helped?
What other guides have come alongside you on the spiritual path, to help make sense of your surroundings – spiritual directors, teachers, authors?
If reading the bible is a challenge for you, you might take a small chunk each day and pray before you read, “Holy Spirit, be with me in my reading and receiving – show me what gifts your Word has for me today.” Read and see what catches your attention. Read it again. Try reading it aloud. Stay with that passage for another day if it’s giving you life. If you’re not part of a bible study group, I highly recommend joining one – having other people’s insights and perspectives opens it up for us.
This Book of ours is a good guidebook, even as some parts can be dull, and others seem out of touch, even angering. The terrain it describes is vast and intricate, ancient and yet to come. But with the Spirit’s help, this Word can nurture our spirits and strengthen our faith… and occasionally even start a fire in our hearts.
© 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Every so often I have an “under a rock” moment; I get too busy to check the news or even social media, and am unaware of major events, celebrities, social moments and movements. The stranger whom the two disciples encounter on the road to Emmaus seems like that, shockingly ignorant of the big news in Jerusalem. Surely even those beyond Jesus’ circle had heard the weekend’s big story, the holy man condemned by the temple leaders, crucified by the Romans – and mysteriously missing from the tomb into which his body had been placed just 36 hours earlier. But here he is, asking,
"What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?’" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.”
Maybe something about this stranger invites them deeper, for they go beyond the facts to the feelings they are wrestling with: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” There it is. “We had hoped…” In addition to the trauma of the past week, they are face to face with their own lost hopes. It was hard enough to put their trust in someone of such simple origins, from Galilee; a rabbi, teacher. Oh yes, there were the miracles, but also the upside-down teachings… Were they just plain wrong?
Are we? Be honest – have you never felt disappointed by God? I don't think it’s possible to be a person of faith and not be disappointed by God. We are invited to put our trust, our weight on someone we cannot see, touch or feel, except in indirect and inward ways. Anyone who’s ever gone out on a limb in prayer and not seen it answered in any positive way, or faced a heartbreak in life, can have a beef with God. Our Scriptures are full of people who have a beef with God – and often express it in eloquent and poetic ways. That’s the key – to express it, have it out with God in prayer, the way we do in any relationship we hope will be lasting and life-giving.
Those men did not know they were confessing their disappointment to the Lord himself – but we do. Tell God the big life stuff, and the little, niggling things. If you feel like you’re at a wall in your faith, say so. The very act of expressing it creates space for the Holy Spirit’s healing, restoring love to work in us.
And, while we're at it, let’s give thanks for the times we have not been disappointed. It’s all part of the picture. The more complete the picture is, the stronger our faith can be.
Those men on the road had more to say, crazy stuff: “Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”
We don’t always know what God is up to when our hopes are dashed. Sometimes we find out later that God has moved heaven and earth on our behalf. Sometimes we discover that Jesus is right in front of us, even when we don’t see 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Sometimes I see posts on social media from friends who are walking El Camino del Santiago, the pilgrimage route through France and Spain to the shrine of St. James (Sant’Iago) at Campostella. Some tell me that people who come together do not always end up walking together. Walking speeds and rhythms diverge; disagreements can crop up. For varied reasons, people often fall in with strangers on that trail, and sometimes those strangers have just the gifts they need for the spiritual journey that parallels the physical one. (Check out “The Way,” a good film starring Martin Sheen as a reluctant pilgrim on the Camino…)
That pilgrimage makes me think of this week’s gospel story, about the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the traveling companion who joined them. In our Sunday readings, it's still the Day of Resurrection. On Easter Sunday, we visit the events of that morning. The next Sunday, it’s that evening. On the third Sunday of Easter this year, we find ourselves in the late afternoon of that same day, on a road outside Jerusalem, with two of Jesus’ followers: Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”
Why were their “their eyes were kept from recognizing him?” Sometimes we just don’t see what we don’t expect to see, especially if it is far outside the bounds of probability. These two were already under great stress from the events of the past few days – watching their Lord betrayed, arrested, tried, mocked, flogged, brutally executed… and just as they were coming to terms with that reality, Reality itself was turned upside down with the empty tomb and reports that people had seen Jesus alive, had talked with him. Could these things be? Was it a conspiracy? A hoax? Could it possibly be true?
We process things by talking about them. So these two, in the midst of great upheaval, were discussing, trying to make some sense of it all. And along comes a stranger who doesn’t even seem to know the events of which they are speaking – yet knows more than anyone they've ever met. He helps them understand, and sends them running seven miles back the way they’d come, their world transformed.
Have you ever found yourself talking about traumatic events with total strangers? Sometimes such conversations happen in hospital waiting rooms, or in the midst of disasters. Maybe you have been the stranger who helped someone else process something painful. Were you aware of the presence of Christ in such an encounter? Of Christ in you, or in another?
Today, let’s give thanks for the companions who join us along our way. Ask God to send you alongside someone who needs the gift you bring, the gift of the presence of Christ in you. Tonight, think back and see how that prayer was answered. Try it again tomorrow.
Whatever hikes I may take, I will assume that Christ is showing up beside me in the people with whom I walk. In fact, this principle may well be true on the roads I find myself walking today, actual or virtual. Where is the risen Christ joining you on the Way 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. The gospel reading for Easter Saturday is here.
This Easter week we've explored the Gospel appointed for each day. Today’s passage from Mark sums up several of Jesus’ resurrection appearances – and in each paragraph we find some variant of “… but he/they did not believe it.” John says, in the passage set for this Sunday, why he wrote his version of the Jesus story: so that his readers may come to believe in Jesus’ messianic and divine identity, and that "through believing you may have life in his name.” Paul, too, links spiritual vitality with believing in Jesus’ divinity. Even Jesus says that those who believe he is who he says he is will have eternal life. This believing stuff is not a minor detail.
Yet, if seeing Jesus risen from the dead did not quell doubt in his early followers, how will reading stories about his resurrection activities and conversations confer faith on us? What the written record does is invite us into the Great Story of God’s love for us expressed in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. It brings us to the threshold. It’s up to us to find out own way into the story and live it, as it was up to those disciples to say “yes” with their hearts to what their eyes and ears reported. We need to experience the Risen Christ for ourselves.
Do you feel you have experienced the reality of Christ in some way or fashion? If we expect to see him the way Mary or the Eleven or the two on the Emmaus road did, we may feel we’re lacking that experience. Visual and aural Jesus sightings are rare… possibly non-existent. Jesus said as much to his followers; he said when he left, the Father would send the Holy Spirit to them. So it is the Spirit who brings the presence of Christ to us in a way we can experience him.
When we feel the Holy Spirit in or around us – whether by a sensation, or an insight, by answer to prayer or some other way – it is the Spirit of Christ we are experiencing. When we have a holy encounter with another person, it may be that we are meeting Christ in them. As we learn to become more aware of that presence, we more readily accept that Christ is a part of us, in our lives – and thus we are led to believing more fully. His life in us leads to believing, and believing leads to more of his life in us. We become instruments for others to experience his life, and on and on it goes.
That’s what the last verse of my song “Was That You?” is about. (You can listen to the whole song here; simple iphone recording; with Denise Bassett on piano and harmonies):
So where did you last see him, where he wasn’t supposed to be?
He told us he’d be with the poor, the lost, the last, the least …
He said that we would know him in Word and bread and wine;
He promised to be with us, now – and to the end of time.
Is that you breathing peace to me when it's storming in my head?
Is that you releasing power in me, the power that raised the dead?
Is that you, loving me more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That it’s you, always next to me.
Jesus, you, right here next to me.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Saturday in Easter Week. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. The gospel reading for Easter Friday is here.
This Easter week we are exploring the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we’re in a fishing boat with Peter and six other of Jesus’ disciples, two unnamed. (John takes care to mention the exact number of fish caught in the nets – someone counted them? – but can’t be bothered to find out the names of two of the crew?). These disciples must have fled Jerusalem for safer home turf in Galilee, and Peter figures he may as well do what he knows, now that everything he thought he learned since leaving his fishing boat has been turned upside-down.
As happened when Jesus first called him away from his nets (Luke 5:1-11), Peter and the crew fish all night and catch nothing. In the morning they’re ready to call it a day, but someone on the shore suggests they throw their nets over to the right. Though that’s pretty much what Jesus had done three years earlier, they don’t recognize the guy as Jesus – not until their nets become so full they’re ready to burst. Then they know who he is, though perhaps he looks different. (“Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.”) Peter, who I guess has been fishing in the buff? throws on some clothes to jump into the water and get to Jesus as fast as he can. That’s love – when you can’t wait to reach the other.
Then Jesus utters my favorite words in the whole Bible: “Come and have breakfast.” He’s got a fire going and some bread, and he invites them to add fish from their catch – his catch, which he has allowed to become their catch; that’s how God’s abundance works in our lives. He blesses the bread and the fish – and thankfully does not say, “Do this in remembrance of me,” or our Sunday mornings would be a lot smellier. He shows them that feasting is a sign of God’s kingdom, and that no goodbye is really final in that realm.
Where has Jesus provided you with a feast lately? Where are you seeing abundance in a time of turmoil and scarcity? Here is the verse of “Was That You?” that goes with this story.” (Iphone recording of the song here, with thanks to Denise Bassett for piano and harmony.) Guess you’ll have to come back for a special Saturday Water Daily for the verse about Jesus’ latest appearance…
A bunch of us were fishing, just out doing what we knew.
The blues are all we’re catching, but what else we gonna do?
At dawn some guy calls from the shore, “Over there, you’ll find some fish.”
As nets start bursting from the haul, we meet our deeper wish:
Was that you, with abundance when I never see enough?
Was that you, showing what strength is, when all I know is being tough?
Was that you forgiving more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, watching out for me.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Friday in Easter Week. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. The gospel reading appointed for Easter Thursday is here.
This Easter week we are exploring the Gospel appointed for each day. Today's reading continues on from the Road to Emmaus story we heard yesterday. We are back in that upper room with Jesus’s disciples, grieving unimaginable loss (“How could he have died?), processing unimaginable news (“He is risen?” “Some of the women saw him?” “Was it just a vision?”), enduring unimaginable terror (“They’re coming for us next…”). Into that swirl of emotions, Jesus appears. He doesn’t come in through a door or a window – he is just there, speaking peace, showing his wounds, explaining God’s Word and naming them witnesses of what God has done and is doing.
And, to quell their fears that they are seeing his ghost, in Luke’s version of the scene (we had John’s on Monday), Jesus invites them to touch the healed wounds in his hands and feet. “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." He asks for something to eat; they give him broiled fish. Not much of a meal for someone who’s returned from the grave, but they get the point.
Luke makes a wonderful statement: “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering…” The joy the risen Christ brings is our gift in the midst of disbelieving and wondering and grieving, not only after. We are invited to be people of joy in all circumstances, and especially this Eastertide. The dislocations caused by the world’s turmoil and tumults may not rise to the level of what Jesus’ followers were going through, but they do help us have insight into their situation. We too are having to process intense and competing emotions, too much information – and too little – and to cope with communal trauma if not personal. No wonder so many of us are more tired than we think we should be. (I found this piece on living with trauma very helpful on that subject.)
Jesus’ first followers didn’t know it was “Easter” either. It was just a Sunday, and they knew he had died, and learned he was risen, and was being seen. And there he was. If we can let go of our expectations of what “Easter” is or should be, and remain present to where Jesus is around us, we might find ourselves filled with joy while disbelieving and wondering.
Here’s another verse from my song “Was That You.” (Modest iphone recording of it here.) This verse didn’t make the cut in what is already too long a song, but it’s the one that goes with this resurrection appearance:
All of us were gathered, shut inside that room;
Doors were locked, windows blocked, it felt just like a tomb;
Then there he was among us, and he showed his feet and hands.
He said, “Be not afraid, my friends, I’ll help you understand.”
Was that you speaking peace to me when all I knew was fear?
Was that you, breathing your Spirit so we’d always have you near?
Was that you blessing me more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, right there next to me.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Thursday in Easter Week. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. The gospel reading for Easter Wednesday is here.
This Easter week we are exploring the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we hit the road to Emmaus with two of Jesus’ followers. We don’t know why they are going to this village seven miles from Jerusalem, but we are told their conversation is all about the events of the weekend, Jesus’ awful crucifixion and burial, and then the astonishing reports from the women who found his tomb empty and angels announcing that he had risen. How could this be?
Then something more confounding occurs: they are joined by a stranger who asks what they are talking about. Has this guy been under a rock? Is there anything else they could be discussing at this time? They fill him in, and he surprises them further by interpreting all these events in light of their scriptures and what the prophets had foretold about the Messiah. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” he asks.
It had not occurred to them to see the events of the past few days in terms of God’s deliverance… it just looked like God’s failure. But still they do not recognize their companion as Jesus. It is not until they sit down to supper with him, and he takes bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them that their eyes are opened – and as soon as they realize who they are with, he vanishes. It is that familiar gesture, which he had done just three days earlier at the Passover feast, that reveals Jesus to them, just as his saying Mary’s name had revealed him to her.
We don’t have the advantage of lived experience with Jesus to draw upon – how do we know when he is with us? Sometimes we have an experience of our “hearts burning within us,” as these men had on the road when Jesus explained the scriptures to them. That happens to me more often in prayer or song than in bible study, but all of these are forms of worship. Sometimes we realize we’re in Jesus’ company in an intimate encounter with a friend who sees and knows and loves us. We might become aware of his presence as we serve another. And churchgoers have experience of seeing the bread taken, blessed, broken and given – we too can recognize Jesus in that action.
Could it be that Jesus is always on the road with us, always willing to illuminate scripture for us, always ready to sit at table with us? Maybe we just need to open the eyes of our hearts and name him – invoking his name is always an invitation to him to be right here.
The second verse of my song, “Was That You?" goes like this (you can listen to it here):
Met a stranger last night, just outside of town
He didn’t seem to understand why we were so cast down.
But he sure did know where God had been, and he stayed with us to eat;
When he broke the bread and blessed it, the picture came complete:
Was that you coming close when I didn’t have a friend?
Was that you giving me hope when I was facing a dead end?
Was that you blessing me more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, walking next to me.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Wednesday in Easter Week. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. The gospel reading for Easter Tuesday is here.
This Easter week we will explore the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we go to back to Sunday morning in that garden with Mary, distraught and bereft at reports that Jesus’ body has been taken from the tomb in which she saw him laid on Friday. …She turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’
We tend to see what we expect to see. Blind is blind. Over is over. Dead is dead. And a man in a garden is likely to be a gardener, right? The man in this garden was solicitous, asking Mary why she wept. In reply, she speaks her urgent need to locate Jesus’ body, which she assumes to have been stolen. Answering the angels a few moments earlier, she articulated her deeper pain in these poignant words, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.” Someone she loved deeply, and depended on, and centered her life around has been taken from her, and she does not know how she will endure a loss of that magnitude.
That is a feeling most of us have experienced, or will, in our lifetime. Facing loss is inevitable when we love; I remember where I was sitting the moment that little insight hit me. But something happened for Mary, in this moment where she made herself vulnerable to a stranger, crying out her pain. Jesus revealed himself, though she had not at first recognized him. Once he spoke her name, she knew without any doubt that it was him, that he was alive. She wanted to touch him, and he said no. Is it possible that this resurrection body which could pass through walls could not be embraced? That is mystery, as is all of this. But he had instructions for her: “Go and tell my brothers.”
Could it be that Jesus is with us in our moments of deepest loss and despair, and we don’t know it? We can, in prayer, bring to mind some of those times and ask Jesus to show us where he was, even if we couldn’t see him or recognize him. It is a way of praying healing into those wounds.
Some years ago, I wrote a song exploring several of the encounters people had with the resurrected Jesus, in many of which they did not recognize him until he did or said something familiar. (You can listen to it here – not a great recording, but it’s all I have - with thanks to Denise Bassett for piano and harmonies. The first verse is about Mary; I will share other verses through this week. The last is about us).
Ran into a gardener, my eyes were blind with tears
Pretty hard to see straight when you’re living your worst fears.
The one I loved the most, gone without a trace -
Then he said my name, I knew that voice… my heart began to race:
Was that you standing next to me when all my hopes were done?
Was that you, alive and breathing, when it looked like death had won?
Was that you loving me more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, standing next to me.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Tuesday in Easter week. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Our Sunday lectionary doesn't let us linger on Easter morning; by next Sunday we’ve jumped to the evening. So today we will look at next week's Gospel, and the rest of the week explore the Gospel appointed for each day in Easter Week, various encounters Jesus’ followers had with his resurrected self.
By the time we meet Jesus’ disciples huddled in that upper room Easter night, they’ve had a very long, strange, dislocating day. It began before daybreak, when some women hurried to the tomb to do for Jesus’ body what Sabbath laws forbade them to do on Friday; a day that went from sad to joyful and bizarre as they were met at that now-empty tomb by an angel (or two) announcing that Jesus was risen. And then, there he was, right there on the road in front of the women, saying, “Tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee,” a travel bulletin which has always struck me as a bit prosaic from someone who’s just been to Death and back…
Yet Jesus’ disciples have not gone to Galilee but are holed up in that room – perhaps the one where they’d celebrated the Passover a few nights earlier, a lifetime ago: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
“Peace be with you.” I can imagine many emotions those men and women probably experienced that day, and none of them involve peace. Here they are, trying to process the cosmic developments they’ve witnessed, while hiding in a locked room because the threat to their lives has just intensified. And here is Jesus, just suddenly there, despite the doors shut and locked? “Peace be with you?”
But Jesus doesn’t only say, “Peace.” He can impart peace. This is the man whom they saw still a violent storm, and calm a violent man. This is the friend they watched endure ridicule and torture and betrayal and a horrible death. When Jesus says, “Peace,” he has the power to generate it. It worked on them – soon they are rejoicing.
And then he breathes upon them, imparting the Holy Spirit and authorizing them to release or to retain sins, to bind or to set free. Jesus’ mission was to set humanity free. Now he sends us to participate in that mission, and he breathes upon us his Holy Spirit. Take a deep breath in…. hold it, let it expand in you…. Feel the life of God fill you. And then exhale, breathing God’s forgiving love out upon someone (maybe yourself..). Then do it again.
Jesus invites us to rejoice too, even in the pain and disruption of global crises. Jesus is still risen! He still speaks peace to us, and as we let his presence live in us, we can feel that peace spreading through our minds and bodies and spirits. This is one way we know we have received God’s Spirit. This is one way Easter becomes real for 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.
You can listen to this reflection here. Today's gospel reading is here.
Each day this week we have heard from one of the main characters in the gospel reading appointed for the day, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus.
The Other Mary: That’s what I’m called in these accounts of Jesus’ death – “The Other Mary.” Like these gospel writers couldn’t bother to get my full name or where I’m from. I’m not Mary, Jesus’ mother; nor Mary of Bethany nor Mary of Magdala. I am Mary, mother of James. And I was there.
I watched them murder him. I watched his mother’s agony, watching him suffocating in agony. I heard the scoffers and the mockers. I saw them take his body down. I helped wrap him in a clean cloth and went along to the tomb that Joseph so generously offered for our use. There was no time to prepare his body – the sabbath was about to begin, and this is the Passover sabbath. We had to put his body somewhere safe until this sabbath is over. We will be there at dawn on Sunday with our spices and ointments to anoint him for a proper burial.
But now we must wait. Doing nothing. This is the worst sabbath I have ever endured. I love my sabbaths – the God-commanded day of rest when I can put down my cooking and cleaning and mending and tending. My only chores are feeding my family and our animals; the rest of the time I can nap, or read, or walk slowly enough to notice the new growth on the fields and trees, appreciate the birds and creatures around me. God’s greatest gift, this sabbath day each week.
But not this day, not this week. To bear this weight of pain and loss, with no tasks to distract us? To have nothing to do BUT think and talk and remember how our Lord we loved so much, who gave us so much, was tortured to death for no reason but to protect the pride and arrogance of insecure men? To have nothing to hold back the waves of feelings that threaten to drown us – terror, rage, confusion, and sorrow, sorrow so deep I don’t think we’ll ever get to the end of it. What have they done? How will we live?
So I will sit, and feel what I don’t want to feel. I will rest, like God rested on the seventh day. Was he gathering up his energy to create even more new life?
What would new life even look like, now?
Will you spend this day in Sabbath time – resting, walking, praying, not doing anything productive? That is one of the best ways to honor Jesus and prepare to celebrate the joy of Easter Day…
You are welcome to join our Great Vigil of Easter service online tonight at 8 pm; find the link here.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Saturday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Today's gospel reading is here. Each day this week we hear from one of the main characters in the gospel reading appointed for the day, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus.
Mary of Nazareth: They keep offering to take me away, my sister, the two Marys. They keep trying to take me home, to get me away from here, from watching him… But I can’t go. I must feel some need to finish this. He said a moment ago… “It is finished.” Or, that’s what they said he said. I couldn’t hear him. His voice was so faint…
But still I can’t leave. Not yet. It wasn’t like I could ever forget that there would be an end like this. I just didn’t ever know how or when it would be. I always knew that he was a gift with strings attached. From the beginning, what that angel, or whatever he was, said to me, “He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High… his kingdom will never end.” And the whole way he just suddenly... was there, in me… And his birth, those crazed shepherds running, finding us, yelling about choirs of angels on the hills…
I always knew he was no ordinary child; I always knew he was never mine to keep. But this – this was not a day I ever imagined, to see my own first son, flesh of my flesh, there…naked, pinned… suffocating… In agony. And yet I can’t leave.
A little while ago he spoke again. Oh God, he barely had the strength to lift his voice. He was looking at me, he wanted me. And there was nothing I could do for him! They took me by the arm, Joanna and Mary, they led me closer. I felt I could have touched him – could have reached out and touched his feet, those feet that were once so small they fit into my hand, those toes I used to tickle, and he would laugh and laugh like an angel… And there they were, and a spike… Oh God, what have you done?
He looked at John, his faithful friend. He looked at me. “Woman, behold your son,” he said. “No, you are my son!” I wanted to cry out. “Take him down!”
Then he said to John, “Here is your mother.” I thought my heart would stop. To be given away, even for my own care? Like the time he wouldn’t see us, his brothers and me. He said those who followed him, his disciples, those were his mothers and his brothers now. And I tried to understand… he was never mine to keep.
But what was it all for? The crowds, the miracles, the healings? All those amazing stories that he told, about forgiveness and the Kingdom of God? Where is all that now? That’s what I want to know. Maybe that’s why I can’t look away – I’ve been waiting to see what he does now! God, where are you now? Your moment to intervene just passed, it seems. Are you going to finish what you started?
A soldier spoke a moment ago, a Roman. He said, “I am sure this man was the Son of God.” That’s what that angel said, so long ago, the words are seared into my memory: “The Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.” So how did this Roman know? Did God tell him too? Maybe it is all true! I believed once and said yes; can I believe again? Maybe God hasn’t finished? Maybe the story isn’t over…
Ah, now John wants to usher me away, already taking up his duties. I am staying till they take him down. They have promised to take care of the body, these women, these Marys, his friends, my friends. And some important men – Joseph, who gave us the tomb; Nicodemus, another one of the Sanhedrin. They brought the ointments and cloths – 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes, Mary said.
I will help. We can't anoint his body with oil until after the Sabbath, but I will touch his bruised skin one more time, look at his face, now just an empty space, before they put him away in that tomb in the garden. Then I will go home.
What has been your greatest loss?
Have you let God into that heartache? Let God fill that space with something that brings life? We can't rush it - but in time, our greatest pain will be overshadowed by the Life of God that cannot be quenched, even in death...
Wait for it. Wait with Mary.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Good Friday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You can listen to this reflection here. Today's gospel reading is here.
This Holy Week, Water Daily looks at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. As we hover at the fringes of this story we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Andrew of Capernaum: My brother! Jesus sure nailed it with the nickname he gave him, Petros. The rock. Never met anyone so hard-headed. And lovable, ornery, faithful, cowardly – all rolled into one ball of leap-before-you-look, speak-before-you-think energy. He’s been like that since we were kids – got me into trouble more times than I care to remember, and usually all I was doing was watching.
So tonight, when Jesus got up from the table, tied on that towel and began to wash our feet, and we’re all looking at each other, mortified – it’s Peter who said out loud what a lot of us were thinking. “Lord, you’re gonna wash my feet? Think again!” Jesus just looked at him with that mix of irritation and love he so often had for Peter, and said, “If you don’t let me wash you, you have no part with me.” But Peter doesn’t let it rest – he has to argue. With our Master! On this night of all nights! “Okay, wash all of me, then! Why stop with my feet?”
Jesus had an answer for him, of course. He always did. It was part of their game – Peter pushing as hard as he could, Jesus coming right back at him. Oh, how they loved each other. Love each other.
It was hard for Peter to submit to being cared for. Hard for all of us. When Jesus got to me, I didn’t want him to touch my feet. They’re not pretty. They were filthy, as feet were in our time. But he focused on that task like it was the only thing in the world he had to do. He got them clean, he rinsed and dried them, and I just had to sit there and receive that gift.
I think that was the hardest of all the things Jesus has asked us to do in the three years since I met him along the banks of the Jordan. Just sit and receive his gift. Powerless.
Little did I know that that’s all I would be doing for the next 24 hours – watching him give his life away for me, powerless to help him, nothing left for me but to receive his gift. And if I have trouble being this still and helpless, what on earth must my poor brother be going through?
How are you at receiving care from others?
How are you at receiving the gifts God wants to give to you?
It’s harder for most people to submit to having someone else wash their feet than it is to wash another’s (unless we’re paying for a pedicure…). Yet arguably our most important spiritual task is learning to take in the love and grace and power of God so we can share it freely with others.
Tonight, I hope you’re going to church, I hope you’ll have a chance to receive the ministry of footwashing, and to offer it. In that order - receive then give. Don’t miss this opportunity to grow in grace, to feel the holy water on your soles.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Maundy Thursday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
