8-27-26 - Life Savers

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

The first image that the word “life saver” brings to my mind is that little round candy you suck on as it releases its flavor. It’s there until it’s gone. Of course, those candies are so named because they resemble life savers, the large, inflated rings affixed to the sides of ships, meant to keep you buoyant should you find yourself in the water. Their saving utility is limited by the circumstances in which they are deployed – they might save you from drowning in the short-term, but not from, say, sharks, storms or starvation. A more complete rescue is still needed.

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  On the face of it, Jesus’ remark that those who want to save their life will lose it, and vice versa, seems scrambled. When we set out to save our life, don’t we usually succeed? How could the very effort to do that guarantee defeat? That depends on what we call life.

If we consider “life” to be mere existence, Jesus’ words seem nonsensical. If we see life in a larger sense as the sum of our interactions in time and space, our bodies, minds and spirits, in relationship and in giftedness – then Jesus’ counter-intuitive words begin to harmonize. Putting our energy into preserving our existence might result in our losing flavor and shape, like those little candies. Sure, we might be alive, but are we living? A fixation on life-preservation, on security, can deliver us from the waves, but not from the more serious spiritual adversities that challenge us. As Jesus went on to say, “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

When Jesus asks us to “lose our life for his sake,” he invites us to let go of the things we cling to, what my friend Linda called our “self-saving strategies” that we think will save us or get us affirmation. Clinging to things that are passing away doesn’t make us very secure. If you're at risk of drowning, struggling to stay alive only imperils you further. Calming down and yielding is key to survival. As we lay back in trust and let Jesus lead us into the Life he came to proclaim and demonstrate, we will find the Life he promises.

• What do you grab onto when you feel threatened? 
• Do you feel called to let go of something you’ve relied upon, that holds you back from giving yourself more fully to God? Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what, and how.

Jesus kept circling back to this “dying to self” thing because he needed his followers free to be led by the Spirit. We can stop trying to gain the whole world and open ourselves to the One who made it. After all, we symbolically drown new Christians at the beginning of their life in Christ. Ultimately, the life saver we need is the One who walked on water and is always here to give us a hand up.

© 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.

8-25-26 - Safety Second

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

Teacher’s pet one minute, Satan’s mouthpiece the next?
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Peter may have thought, “What just happened? Look, Master, I left my family and business to follow you. I jumped out of a boat and walked on water for you. I see the truth about who you are. One minute I'm your Rock and the next I’m your stumbling block? How can you call me Satan? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Why are you being so harsh?”

How could Jesus be so harsh to such a devoted and beloved disciple and friend? For one thing, that’s how close a relationship he had with Peter – he didn’t have to be polite. And he really wanted his followers to find a new, more God-like way of thinking. “For my ways are not your ways, nor my thoughts your thoughts, says the Lord,” we hear from Isaiah, and from Jesus, “You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.”

Maybe Jesus speaks this fiercely because that’s how crucial it is that Peter get this right. If Peter is the “rock” on which Jesus hopes to build his community of Kingdom believers, then Peter of all people has to understand. He has to stop thinking in the world’s terms and start thinking in Kingdom terms. And in Kingdom terms, safety does not come first – faithfulness does.

I am wired toward safety and security. That can get in the way of faithfulness to God’s call, impede discerning God’s invitations. There’s nothing wrong with safety – God does not ask us to take risks for the heck of it. Sometimes, though, God wants to work through us in circumstances that are less than safe – after all, much of our world is less than safe.

When we know it’s God’s call, we might step into some risk; that is a matter of discernment and testing the call with others. Many people who feel called to mission or relief work are drawn inevitably to places of conflict and violence and trauma. But they feel God calling them to go, to be a witness to love; they surround themselves with prayer; and they go. Usually they came back in one piece.

But not always. The mission to which Jesus was called was not compatible with staying out of harm. We can see from the news that such tests still come. Today in prayer we might ask the Spirit if she is inviting us to participate in her transforming work in some way that involves risk. Risk doesn’t have to mean bodily harm – it might mean risking relationships or financial security, or working with difficult people or in areas that aren’t so safe. Where are you being nudged to open yourself to God’s Spirit in ministry? How does that feel? Talk to Jesus about it.

In the end, our criterion need not be, “Will I be safe,” but “Is this God’s work that I’m being invited to participate in?” If it is, and we are, then we walk in faith, trusting in the God we cannot see, trusting in the future on which we have staked our lives. God’s thoughts… how can we go wrong with those?

© 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.

8-20-26 - Keys To the Kingdom

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

I’ve always pictured an oversized key, like an honorary Key to the City. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said to Simon Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

He has just called Peter the “rock on which I will build my church.” And now the keys to the Kingdom? We can only guess at what he meant – that is how theologians and biblical scholars make a living, after all. But we might get a hint of what he intended when we think about what keys do. They lock things, and they open them. They make them inaccessible and accessible.

The Kingdom of God is a reality that Jesus described through image and metaphor, and demonstrated through healing, teaching, and transformative actions that look to us like miracles. It is the realm of God, the reality of God, the Life of God as it unfolds in our own plane of reality. It is power and energy and boundless grace. To be given the “keys” to this reality is to be given power to unlock, release the energy of heaven – or to withhold it. Hence, “…whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

We are heirs to this gift, this promise, this frightening spiritual authority. We can keep the realm of God, with all its power and promise and peace, locked up simply by not talking about it, or not exercising the power we’ve been given. Or we can use these keys to open it to everyone who is thirsty for spiritual connection.

We can keep people bound by withholding forgiveness, and loosed by exercising grace. Jesus gave us these gifts not to be locked away in a safe deposit box, but to be spent, drawn down, exhausted… only to find them constantly replenished, like a waterfall.

In prayer today, imagine sitting with Jesus and having him hand you a set of keys. What do they look like? What do they open? Who has the keys to your heart?

There are some things that need to remain bound, I suppose – the power of evil to wreak destruction in our world, for one. Racism, materialism, consumerism, nationalism… there are a few. And so many more things and people and communities that need to be released, set free. I believe God wants us in the “loosing” business, one lock at a time. That's what the keys to the kingdom are for.

© 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.

8-17-26 - Who Is Jesus?

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

It’s a mid-course check-in. Jesus has collected a community of followers. He has healed hundreds, fed thousands, forgiven, blessed, released and taught. But does anyone know who he really is? Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Jesus used the title “Son of Man” to refer to himself. This mystery has given biblical scholars plenty to chew on through the millennia. It is a title that appears often in the Hebrew Bible, mostly in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, where it does not suggest divine identity. It might be a title of humility, as well as humanity. In effect he was asking his closest associates, “What are people saying about me?”

Their answers reflected the recent or distant past. Jesus was regarded as a prophet in the mold or even a personification of Elijah or Jeremiah or another of the great prophets of ancient Israel. Some thought he had taken on the mantle of John the Baptist. Then Jesus probed a bit deeper. “Never mind what other people think – who do you say that I am, you who have lived with me and walked with me, trained with me and prayed with me. Do you recognize the fullness of who I am?”

Peter gives an answer which pleases Jesus, which we'll explore tomorrow. Today let’s take the question as directed at us: Who do you say that Jesus is? A role model? A great teacher? A healer? Savior? Prophet? God incarnate?
Try to separate your answer from what you’ve been taught all your life.

We could go deeper, ask the question another way:
How have you experienced Jesus? Who is he to you?

If he’s just a character in a book, a figure from a painting or stained glass window with a bubble around his head, I invite you to explore his “living-ness.” It’s a big claim we make as Christians, that our Lord who died over 2,000 years ago rose again and is accessible to us through His Spirit. We can know him in prayer, in action, in worship, in the sacraments. How do you know him? How would you like to?

Talk to him. Who does he say he is when you ask 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.

8-14-26 - A Turn of Mind?

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

One of the words I learned in my first year of divinity school was “Immutable.” Traditional Christian theology asserts this as one characteristic of God. It means “unchangeable” or “cannot be acted upon.” How God could be deemed “immutable” is puzzling, as there are stories in both Old and New Testaments in which God seems to be swayed from an announced course of action by some human input. Abraham’s dickering with God over the fate of Sodom is a prime example.

In this week’s story about the Canaanite woman who implored Jesus to heal her daughter, Jesus seems to change his mind. Let’s review the conversation: She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.”

The notion that Jesus – God – could change his mind is troublesome for those on the “predestination/ everything-is-preordained” end of the theological spectrum. For them, Jesus must have planned all along to accede to the woman’s pleas, and was somehow testing his followers or setting up a miracle. That scenario does not work for me. Not only does it clash with the story as both Matthew and Mark present it, it makes Jesus look manipulative and cruel in addition to rude and uncaring. That does not square with the way he is portrayed in most Gospel scenes.

I go for the plainer sense of the words as we have them – which show Jesus making a transition. While no one knows why he at first rebuffed this woman, after she likens herself to a dog eating crumbs under a table, he is moved by her humility and faith, and pronounces the healing of her daughter. Perhaps he recalled his own teaching that even a mustard seed of true faith Is sufficient to move mountains. Perhaps he was moved by her calling him “Son of David.” Perhaps he truly looked at her for the first time. We only know he arrived at a different place than he started from.

Why should this surprise us? Exercising free will is intrinsic to what it means to be a human being made in the image of God. That, according to our Genesis story, is what got us into trouble in the first place. But it is our also our will which allows us to accept God’s grace and forgiveness. If it is both human and divine to exercise free will, then we should rejoice that Jesus displayed this quality. It gives us yet another point for connecting with him, and enlivens our relationship with him as we interact with him through the Holy Spirit.

Though it is comforting to know that Jesus was capable of a turn of mind, I dare say it is more often our minds that will be changed as we seek God’s wisdom. We are invited, as we live in Christ, to come to share the mind of Christ. (“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” – Phil 2:5), to allow our wills to be united with the will of God. Are there issues in your life in which you feel you and Jesus want different things? Have you brought that up in prayer? Are you willing to be shown God’s view on that matter? Can you tell God yours? No time like the present...

If we leave this story with nothing else, I hope it has given us a renewed awareness of how lively our relationship with God can be. It’s not a stiff, stale historical drama – it’s up-to-the-minute eyewitness news. So let’s keep our eyes open, and our minds as well, and bear witness to the healing love of God, which never comes too late.

© 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.

8-12-26 - Bad Mood Jesus

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

A read through the Gospels makes it plain that Jesus held the full range of human emotions; he was not above sorrow or sarcasm, anguish or anger. In the event we explore this week, though, he appears rude, even mean. His dismissive response to this woman and her plea is unlike any other recorded encounter. Where usually he went out of his way to connect with the needy - lepers, blind people, tax collectors and prostitutes - here he seems to push someone away: Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Is this Jesus “staying on mission,” wary of getting off schedule again? Was he having a mood swing? Why would he define his boundaries so narrowly here, when he engaged with and offered healing to Gentiles elsewhere? When the woman presses the issue, he gets even more tactless: But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Whoa. This goes beyond, “I’m tired, I’m busy, leave me alone.” Jesus seems to say that this women and her demon-enslaved daughter are unworthy of his Father’s love, power, healing. I have often noted that the promise written into some baptismal covenants – “Will you respect the dignity of every human being?” - is not explicitly biblical. But it is consonant with the overall arc of God’s redemptive action, declaring the likes of you and me, the poor, unclean, and lame, the successful as well as the most broken worthy of extravagant, sacrificial love. Why not this poor mother, so desperate and full of faith?

Is Jesus frustrated at the lack of response to his ministry among so many of his own people, who don’t seem to acknowledge the power this outsider recognizes and craves? Whatever his motivation, the resulting words and attitude seem to clash with the Jesus we see at work elsewhere.

We don’t have enough information to explain it. We just need to sit with it, to receive it as part of the record. This odd and troubling vignette invites us to expand our picture of Jesus, let it become more rounded, more layered and shaded, more flesh and blood. It is oddly comforting to know that Jesus shared our humanity so fully that he too could be stressed and snappish (yet, without sin!).

Perhaps today we might sit quietly in prayer for a time, reflecting on the last time we said or did something unkind or inconsiderate, found ourselves acting out of a bad mood instead of our best self. Might we call that moment to mind, and rather than beating ourselves up for it, invite Jesus to sit with us in it? Might we draw near to him in his “bad mood moment,” if that’s what it was, and so make space for him to draw near to us in ours?

The rest of the story makes it clear that the seeming put-down was not the last word, that the fullness of Jesus included an ability to let another person in and adjust his settings according to new input. And at every moment, God loved him. So it is for us. As we accept that love, we may find our “snappish” moments become fewer and our moments of regarding the Other with love increase.

© 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.

8-11-26 - Pushy Woman

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

She had no business bothering Jesus. She was a Gentile, and a woman. She was loud – and pushy: Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

As Mark tells this story, the woman is Syro-Phoenician, from the nearby coastal region called Phoenicia, part of the province of Syria. But Matthew, writing later, uses an archaic term, “Canaanite.” There was no Canaan in Jesus’ time, and hadn’t been for centuries. Canaan was the name of the Promised Land that God promised the Israelites; the Promised Land Moses led them toward and Joshua led them into - amid, as our Hebrew Bible tells the tale, much slaughter of local populations and suppression of local religions and customs. Some Canaanites may have gone north into Phoenicia when the Hebrews came into their territory. This is the history Matthew stirs up, linking this woman with those long-ago enemies of Israel. She has no status with the Jews, no connection. So what is she doing calling Jesus by the Messianic title, “Son of David,” and asking for his help?

This woman is one of the outliers we find in the Gospels who name Jesus’ true identity as the Messiah while the people around him don’t seem to get it. This unnamed mother stands with the Roman centurion and blind Bartimaeus and the Samaritan woman at the well. She gets who Jesus is, and knows he can help her little girl.

But Jesus does not seem to “get” her. He dismisses her brusquely, refusing to hear her request (more on that tomorrow...). Though in this story he is the foreigner – he is in her territory – he notes the ethnic and religious difference and seems disinclined to cross that line. Given that he has just declared that we should be judged by what comes from within us, not the externals, he seems quick to categorize her and her daughter as “not his problem.”

Our world is full of children who are not our problem – until we open our eyes and claim them. In our time, anti-immigration protesters, even some wearing crosses, carry signs saying, “Not our children. Not our problem.” Some people condemn “those Muslim terrorists” or “those dangerous refugees,” as though they are then free to wipe their hands of the world’s problems. Some say, “We have hunger here. We should feed our own.”

But some go out to where the Other lives and bring food, education, medical care and friendship. My friend Tom Furrer, an Episcopal priest, has made at least 25 medical missions in northern Nigeria, where his former parish and other partners have built clinics. Each year for two weeks they see thousands of patients, including many Muslims in a region where Christian-Muslim violence is horrific (this is the area where Boko Haran operates.) Tom has written that one of their goals is to show love and respect to Muslims “and so to demonstrate an alternative narrative to the one of the terrorists now plaguing this country.” More than one Muslim treated at the FaithCare mission said, “I had heard that Christians hate us. Now I see that is not true.”

Who is calling your name from the margins, asking for help? Maybe someone you don’t want to see? What if you engage? This outlier woman had something to give Jesus – and eventually he became open to what she offered. The most amazing things can happen when we turn and see what it is those loud, pushy people want.

© 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.

8-3-26 - Time Apart

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

Sooner or later, Jesus was going to get that “alone time” he’d been wanting. It came a day later than planned, a full day of healing, teaching and miraculously feeding thousands of people – but then he took his retreat. Once the leftovers were collected, “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray."

Being a conduit of the power of God takes energy out of a person, even Jesus. The need to rest, recharge, reconnect with the Spirit of God is as important as the visible ministry we do, maybe more so. We can do a kind of recharging in community, especially over a meal and a celebration, but for most people, our deep spirit is best renewed in solitude.

Solitude is hard to find in our multiply-connected, always “on” world. But there’s more to it than finding alone space. Many of us live with a malaise that makes it hard to seek quiet time. Our constant input, 24-7 connectivity provides ample distraction to avoid darker feelings, disappointments, mistakes, hurts we have inflicted or received, loss and pain.

We all know about distracted driving; maybe we should also wrestle with distracted living, moving too fast to notice what and who is around us, rushing to the next thing that will make us feel connected, filling every moment and part of our lives so we don’t have to face the emptiness inside.

What happens when you get time alone? Are you able to sit quietly with yourself, or do you read, download, check texts, emails, social media, google questions and watch funny pet videos? I’m afraid I too often do puzzles or pay bills; sitting quietly with myself or with Jesus can be a great challenge. I run back to my to-do list at the drop of a hat. The to-do list makes me feel filled and fulfilled, recognized, connected. Who wants to sit in silence before the vastness that is God?

Well, Jesus did… and he knew he needed that in order to live fully into his identity. Granted, he had a relationship with the Father; he didn’t need to forge one. But in his humanity he was as vulnerable as we are to the games of ego and gratification and regard. One way to live out of his true identity and not the false ones the world tried lure him into was to break away on his own sometimes for prayer and solitude. Same goes for us.

Do you do that every week? Every day? Might we covenant together to spend about ten minutes off the grid each day this week, sitting with the silence and stillness, uncomfortable as it might be? The only way to reset our priorities is to sit before God, still and waiting and expectant. That is hard for me! If it’s easy for you, you are blessed indeed. Share your secret with someone.

Here’s a prayer we can try: “Come, Holy Spirit. Quiet my mind, stir up my soul. Breathe your life into me and let me come into stillness. Let me hear what I need to hear, discern what I need to let go of. Renew my spirit, refresh my mind, and re-center me so that, like a record on a turntable, your song plays through me truly, without distortion, for those around me to hear.”

Don't put any "shoulds" on it. Just call it “me time.” It’s really “Me and God” time, but no one needs to know that…

© 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.

7-30-26 - God's Enough

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

I’m always wary when there is a lot of food left after a dinner party, concerned that the guests didn’t really like it. At the same time, empty serving dishes hint that I did not make enough; leftovers are evidence there was enough and to spare. Abundance. So it was that day of Jesus’ Big Picnic: “And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.”

How often do we find ourselves expecting the bare minimum, when God has blessed us with abundance? Vats and vats of water turned to finest wine, thousands fed on what seemed much too little, yet yielding baskets of leftovers. I can just hear Jesus saying to his followers, “Get it? Do you understand how things work in the Life of God?”

I do believe abundance is a principle of God-Life, one we are invited to get used to, even expect. I have also found that sometimes God’s “enough” is just enough, with not a lot to spare. Church budgets with projected deficits come out close to even, but there are no windfall bequests. Just enough people show up to do a work project to get it done. So often, things just work, and there is enough, more than expected, but just enough, not what we'd call abundance.

It is always risky to try to extrapolate the plans of God from our small experiences, but perhaps In these situations, the provision of way too much would invite us to complacency, where just “enough” keeps us faithful and alert. Or maybe we crave more than God thinks we need. Whether enough or more than enough, one thing I’m pretty sure of is that God is not in the business of scarcity.

• What do you fear you will not have enough of? 
• What do you have just enough of? 
• Where do you see abundance? 

Exploring these questions can be a good spiritual diagnostic exercise, giving us clues as to where our trust in God is weaker or stronger. Then we can invite the Spirit to build us up where we need it, and pray for the grace to let go where we’re clutching. A similar examination of how and when and to whom we find ourselves giving abundantly, and where we give with a tight fist, or not at all, provides a helpful inventory of our relationships and anxiety levels. What circumstances prompt you to give generously?

Whether we have leftovers for a week or just enough to cover our needs, it is all provision from the One who made us. As we grow in recognizing and appreciating God's gifts, we can live and love with the kind of abundance that is God's hallmark. As we receive, so let us give. As Jesus said, "A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38)

© 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.

7-16-26 - Avenging Angels

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

Jesus didn’t talk much about angels, but in his stories they’re anything but comforting. They’re fierce and on a mission – and in the story he tells of the wheat and the weeds, that mission is executing God’s final judgment: “…the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Who wants to dwell on the prospect of a final judgment? Many Christians remove the judgment from our God story, preferring to emphasize God's mercy and acceptance. I am a huge fan of God’s mercy and acceptance… but without judgment these are pretty cheap commodities. If we’re going to take judgment out of the picture, we need to excise much of what Jesus taught and lived. Our claim as Christians, at least traditionally, is that God's judgment awaits us, yet we will experience it as righteous, redeemed sinners because of what Jesus did for us. We are received in grace because we are one with Christ, inheritors of God's great love.

This is only one of the stories Jesus told that include an Ultimate Sorting, with unrepentant, unredeemed evildoers meeting an unhappy fate – here a furnace of fire, "where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Why is there teeth-gnashing in Jesus’ images of hell? Did dental problems cause him to conceive of aural and dental torture to go along with the fire? Puts a new spin on his humanity...)

The ones doing the sorting in this tale are angels, who serve as God’s messengers – the way they are depicted here, we might even say henchmen. Is fire the fate we would wish upon the weeds sown in the field, those who despise God and seek to destroy the goodness of God’s creation and creatures? Shouldn’t the judgment be aimed at the enemy sower?

That is a matter for us to pray about. If some manner of torment awaits the completely destructive, whether it’s physical pain or separation from God, that should drive us to pray fervently for them, asking God to have mercy, and do our best to share with them our own hope. Do you suppose that’s what Jesus meant by “pray for your enemies?” Might we even spare a prayer for the Enemy of Human Nature?

Could we do such a thing in our prayer time today? Think of the worst sort of “weeds” we can, and pray for mercy for their souls? And that somehow that mercy would become real to them, working its way into stony hearts to reawaken love and compassion and hope?

Maybe you or I are called to show God's mercy to a particularly nasty sort of weed. Mercy can catalyze conversion and healing. We may just lighten some fearsome angel’s workload.

© 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.

7-1-26 - Come Unto Me

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

Were sweeter words ever found in Scripture for a harried people? “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Being a disciple means taking on the discipline of a master, doing whatever she or he tells you to do. The Pharisees and teachers of the law demanded much of their followers, to keep the Law of Moses perfectly in every particular. Nuances of love, mercy and relationship often fell by the wayside. The burdens of these demands were heavy indeed, and never satisfactorily met - except by the Teachers, of course.

We can say the same of the demands our culture places upon us – to be more productive, more successful, more financially secure, more fashionable, attractive, sweet-smelling, popular… you name it. The new law is no less onerous than the old. And so Jesus’ invitation is alive for us as well.

We take on a yoke when we take on Christ’s life, as oxen are fitted with an apparatus so they can pull a cart. We offer our obedience to him and take on the ministry of being his apostles, his witnesses – proclaiming the Good News, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, freeing the captives. Like his original disciples, we may be called to give up things or people we find precious for rewards only known later.

But Jesus says his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. Unlike the burden of the Law-bound, his is the yoke of freedom in God. Unlike the arrogant Teachers, he is gentle and humble in heart; he was never ashamed to eat with obvious sinners and people on the margins.

• Do you want to find rest for your soul? In many of us, our soul feels restless, especially in a culture that does not privilege space for the spiritual.
• Have you experienced knowing Jesus as restful or stressful? 
• If stressful, we might take a look at what part of his message we’re focusing on.
• What can you do today to find rest for your soul? 

Whether you are in the midst of work stress, or easing into a summer vacation, I suggest you start with some “soul rest” in Jesus’ presence. Hand off your burdens and take on his promise of peace. And then spread it around.

© 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.

6-30-26 - Who're You Calling a Baby?

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

How do you feel about being called a baby? At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

We could see it as an insult - or receive it as an invitation to total trust in God. Infants are receiving machines - they do not feed, clothe or even move themselves. The only thing they can “do” is ask for help by using their voices – and reward their helpers with big smiles, which they quickly learn will get them far. If it were true that “God helps those who help themselves,” a deeply destructive maxim nowhere to be found in Christian scripture, none of us would see our first birthdays.

Infants are clear about their needs and quick to ask. They are fully in relationship with their care-givers. We can learn from them to go first to God when we need something instead of making it our last resort. And, as with those babies who reward us with gurgles and smiles, we can learn to praise the moment we receive a gift.

Of course, infants are anything but simple. In their tiny minds and bodies are contained all the systems and equipment that adults have, just waiting to mature. Whether we are young or mature in faith, we too have everything we need to live a God-reliant, praise-filled life – it is all given to us by the Holy Spirit in baptism, waiting to be developed.

• What are some attributes of infants that you might borrow and try on as you approach God?
• What are the things you cannot do for yourself that you are afraid to trust God with? Or eager to?

The most challenging part of faith-life for many is having to depend upon the grace and mercy and power of God for what matters most in the long term. Learning to receive God’s goodness and not worry so much about repaying – for we cannot – is a mark of maturity in faith.

Today in prayer try an imagination exercise – imagine yourself as an infant being held or watched over by Jesus… that image once came to me in healing prayer.
How does he interact with you in that prayer space?
Does he say anything? Do you? What do you feel?

Infants have a huge learning curve, because they have everything about life to learn. As Christ followers, we are in a similar position – we have everything about God-Life to learn. Let’s open our spiritual senses and breathe it 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.

6-24-26 - Sent

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

I didn’t think I could squeeze one more word out of this this week’s short Gospel passage, but I might just manage one: Sent. It is implied in what Jesus says about people welcoming those who come in his name as prophets and righteous folks, that they are sent, as he was sent. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

What does it mean to be sent? Messengers are sent, ambassadors are sent, representatives are sent, teams are sent out on the field, troops to war, first responders to accident sites… To be sent means to be deployed for a specific purpose. Most often our being sent bears some relation to our skills or connections.

Jesus sent his disciples to proclaim Good News of God’s activity in the world, to announce freedom to the poor and those in captivity, to heal the sick and raise the dead. Those are still pretty much the reasons he sends his followers out. Do you feel sent to any particular place or people? Where do your skills and connections and passions point you?

It can take a while to discern where we are being sent – and those “in between” times can be hard to wait through. But I have learned it’s better to wait till things begin to become clear, not force a decision or make a choice out of anxiety or an excess of rational thinking; discerning God’s sending needs to come from both head and heart. And often we don’t fully know it is the “most right” thing till we arrive. The confirmation does come, sooner or later. (For me in this new call in Nova Scotia it was immediate and only keeps growing.)

In my experience, when I am sent by God, I'm also led and equipped. Unlike a courier who goes out and reports back, apostles of Jesus Christ get to carry his presence and power with us as we go. It takes off some of the pressure, if we can only allow the Spirit to do the work and stop taking it on ourselves.

• When have you felt sent by God, short or long-term?
• What inner urges are you discerning – or trying to push down? 
• Where would you like to be sent? Where are you afraid to be sent?

Being sent starts, like everything in the Christian life, with relationship. We strengthen our relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit so that we can better understand God's prompts. They might come through our own desires, or through discerning a need or a lack. Sometimes God makes it clear through dreams and “coincidences” that cannot finally be denied. We can check with others if a calling seems really odd or risky – and if we go forward, know it will be most fruitful as we are aware of going with God, not for God.

Wherever God sends us, when we get there, we find God there too. Funny how that works.

© 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.

6-22-26 - Welcome

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

Permit me a rant… yesterday’s Gospel was 315 words of dense, challenging, provocative, hard-to-find-the-Good- News-in teaching from Jesus. And next Sunday’s? 82 words in 2 sentences, four clauses, saying not all that much. Grrrr! On the other hand, if we could parry all that talk about swords, surely we can dive in and welcome the gifts of this very brief passage… which is all about welcoming.

After Jesus gives his followers hard instructions about going out to proclaim the Good News and heal the sick, he softens a bit, saying of those among whom they would go, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Jesus stressed welcome in his sending talk, because his followers were to go to villages and towns taking nothing along, no extra tunics, no clean underwear, no toothbrush, no money. They were to rely on the hospitality of those who welcomed them – and if they were not welcomed in one place, they were to move on, save their breath.

This is important for us to hear. So often we express anxiety about discussing our faith with others; we assume that conversation will not be welcomed. Well, so what? Some will want it, some won’t. If someone is not interested, move on, Jesus says, because you will find someone who does want to talk about matters of spirit and will be grateful that you had the courage to engage them in a conversation of the heart.

Mindfulness workshops and yoga retreats notwithstanding, our culture makes little room for spirituality that is rooted in religious tradition. When we introduce the spiritual into a conversation we are making space for a holy connection. We rely on the hospitality of the other person to welcome us into that space. If the other person doesn’t want to, no problem. Try again with someone else. Be open to the conversation if someone else introduces it. Let’s invite people to see our connection to God.

• Do you anticipate rejection when you contemplate talking about your experience with God, Jesus, Spirit, or do you expect welcome? Either way, we can be surprised…
• Can you think of a person with whom you might want to start that conversation?
• What do you think his or her reaction would be if you raised a spiritual subject?

We don’t have cold-call people. We can respond to the Spirit’s prompts about who might be open. We can ask God in prayer, even over a period of weeks or years, “Shall I talk to that person about my faith? What’s the right approach? When do you think I should do it?” I believe that’s a prayer that God will answer, maybe with a sign of some kind, or by our getting a feeling of “wait” or “go,” or there being an opening. That prayer will open our spirits and prepare us.

Jesus implies that someone will welcome us as we go about the mission of God to restore all things and all people to wholeness. And when they do welcome us, as we go in Christ’s name, they are welcoming him, and in welcoming him, they are welcoming God himself.

It’s like bringing the CEO on a sales call, or having the chief of surgery giving an injection. We get to be the advance folks; God does the work.

© 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.

6-19-26 - Family Values

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

I am amused when “family values” are equated with a 1950s two-parent nuclear unit, as though that were a perfect reflection of Christian virtue. In fact, Jesus disregarded his own mother publicly when she showed up with his brothers to quiet him down and bring him home. He also said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

For those who would follow Jesus, family is not blood kin, but the community of fellow Christ-followers. Loving God comes first, no matter what. As a pastor frequently frustrated when the claims of nuclear family impede involvement in church family, I read those words with a certain grumpiness. Sigh! It’s been a hard week in Water Daily Land, trying to interpret one hard teaching about priorities after another. Putting Jesus first is more counter-cultural all the time. Our culture says family comes first, no matter what. And we are much more formed by our culture than by what Jesus taught.

You may be familiar with the Jesus Doll, a rag doll with brown hair and a beard, a tunic, coat and sandals. He's soft and squishable and great for kids. In a previous parish, we let kids bring Jesus the Doll home for a week. They were encouraged to take Jesus everywhere they went, and to write in the journal that accompanied him. Where did Jesus go this week? Gymnastics? The swimming pool? Walking the dog? Fishing? Kids loved it. Mothers found it more wearing.

“Oh my God,” one said, “It’s unbelievably stressful having Jesus! I was afraid the dog would eat his sandals, or him. I was afraid we’d leave him somewhere!” Another, unable to get Jesus back to us for several weeks, wrote an apologetic email. She’d been sick, the kids had been sick, her husband had been away on business, Jewish friends visited, so they put him away; some other things happened… she concluded, “It just wasn’t a good week to have the Son of God at our house!”

News flash: it’s never a good week to have the Son of God at our house! Life is a whole lot easier with the priorities the world presents us: “Take what you want, when you want it, with whom you want it.” Chances are, if you’re reading this, you have already decided that is not your choice. Maybe you’ve entered the relationship into which Jesus invites you, or you are curious and exploring it. Maybe you’ve already discovered what Christians have known for 2000 years, that life is infinitely richer – though no less painful – when we are aware of having the Son of God around our house.

Jesus did not come to make us feel better about our lives. Jesus came to draw us closer in the one relationship we will have for eternity, in intimacy with God. Starting that relationship here and now makes our lives more purposeful – and often more stressful. “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” Jesus says at the end of this teaching.

• What are some of the ways Jesus’ claims have caused you to “lose your life,” or at least to give up some patterns that felt easy but were not life-giving?
• What are some of the ways you resist putting God in first place in your life?
• Who or what would have to be moved to second or third? 
• Can you offer that to God in prayer, inviting the Spirit in?

The gift – which we can only discover by doing it – is that when we move God-life into first place, we engage our other priorities more fully, because we don’t try to own them. We appreciate them as gifts, and can stop ranking them. Maybe that’s what Jesus means by “finding our life…”

© 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.

6-16-26 - Splitting Hairs

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

“Have no fear of them,” Jesus says, as he tells his followers of the enemies they may encounter on God’s mission. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

So, God knows the number of hairs on our heads (what if you're bald?) and values us even more than precious sparrows. That does not mean God promises us physical protection. (Read Psalm 79 sometime, and remember that most of the people to whom Jesus was speaking died a martyr’s death.) It may mean simply that we are of infinite value to God, whose love for us is not diminished by our physical death.

It is a hard balance we seek as followers of the One who promised eternal life: to live fully in this life, loving its gifts and pursuing God’s mission in the world, while holding this life lightly, knowing it is not our final destination. People who have had near-death experiences often say they no longer fear death. And it is the fear of death that so often holds us back from fully living our lives.

Jesus is not minimizing the trauma of physical death, I don’t think. He is inviting us to weigh that against the greater trauma of spiritual death, apathy or even allegiance to that enemy who seeks to degrade and destroy God's creatures. If fear of death, or fear of losing income or time or reputation keeps us from giving our hearts to God, we place ourselves in spiritual peril. Following Jesus does not mean that nothing else in our lives matters; it means we gradually allow ourselves to put God first, above every other thing and person who claims our love. It’s not either-or; it’s both-and… and in the order of priority. God comes first.

And if God comes first, it lowers the stakes for everything else. We can be more confident taking risks when we value our God-Life more than our physical life. Not caring so much about our physical existence – while still investing in it; I did say it was a balancing act – sets us free to discover who we most fully are, how exquisitely and uniquely we are made. Rather than seeing Jesus’ words as warning, might we take them as invitation to greater freedom?

Today let's examine what holds us back from making God our number one priority, if God is not. What fears impede our proclaiming our allegiance to God in Christ?

If we can name our fears, we can invite the Holy Spirit to transform them into freedom. “Perfect love casts out fear” is a promise we are given in scripture. Wherever we feel fear, we might invite God to sow love… envision the place of your fear and see God planting a seed of love in that spot.

Then we can sit with the sparrows and watch our fear wither like a weed and the love grow strong and beautiful, knowing that God is keeping an eye on us... and counting the hairs on our heads, however few or many there may be.

© 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.

6-1-26 - 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.

5-28-26 - 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.