You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Have you ever tried to praise God when you’re hunched over or miserable? Of all the types of prayer, praise is one of the most embodied. When we are filled with the Spirit of God, excited about what God is doing or has done in, through, or for us, we naturally straighten our spines, even extend our arms, open our hands. Our bodies participate with our minds and our spirits in the act of praise.
Praise is the first thing the crippled woman in our story did, as the effect of Jesus’ declaring healing on her took hold: immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
Maybe she was exulting at being able to stand up straight for the first time in eighteen years. She was also participating in the prayer, inviting the Spirit to bless her into wholeness. Praise is one of the best conductors for healing power there is. When we’re praising God, it’s hard to focus on how sick, scared or miserable we are. Those things may still be there, but they’re not where we’re putting our energy.
Maybe praise releases endorphins – spiritual, if not chemical. Really exuberant praise, as at rock and roll shows or sports events, probably releases the chemical kind. When we release ourselves in praise, it also spreads good feelings to the people around us. There’s no downside to praising the One who made us, who heals us, who loves us.
Praise is a choice, an act of will. We choose to praise God for everything we know and believe about God, no matter what else is going on in our lives. It’s an act of will that opens us up to the power that makes us whole. Most of us need to practice praise; it doesn't come naturally. It can be hard to do with words, because we run out of them quickly. And it can feel funny to just repeat phrases like “God, I praise you. I honor you. I exalt you….” We don’t talk to people in our lives that way – we don’t have to be so stiff with God either. We can let our spirit take the lead.
Try praising God without words. Maybe sing a hymn or song you love, or bring up an image of beauty or love in your mind and thank God for that. And if something anxious or negative intrudes, gently say, “Not now. It’s praise time…”
We might invite our bodies to take the lead, opening ourselves into a posture of praise: sit or stand up straight; fill your lungs with deep, long, cleansing breaths; ask your arms how they would like to praise their maker. We might dance, or walk. If movement is difficult, we move what we can, and make that a prayer for restored mobility.
What if our posture was the first thing we address when we’re feeling stressed or sad or anxious? Remember that woman, bent over for so long, suddenly able to stand straight. She can be our model for the posture of praise.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label Praise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Praise. Show all posts
4-11-25 - Do Stones Sing?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
One person’s praise is another’s blasphemy. When the Pharisees heard Jesus’ disciples calling him the “King that comes in the name of the Lord,” they asked him to shut them up: Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Praise is part of the natural order in God’s world. Sometimes it’s obvious in a riotous sunset or an explosion of spring flowers, the grandeur of a waterfall, symphony of birdsong. But do stones really shout out the praises of the One who made them? One day I asked one. Sitting on a rock in the sun during a Spa for the Spirit morning retreat, it told me a lot:
I sing.
I sing of God’s love.
Even if I cold and solid and unmoving – I sing.
I sing a song rooted in ancient times
I have been singing, and the song has changed and grown –
oh, not so you could notice unless
you were watching for the past 20,000 years or so –
But I sing.
Of love unmoving, unmovable
I sing of earth, of lichen and moss
and living things that grow on me
I sing with birds, whose song blends with mine
I sing of grass and trees with whom I share this spot
of sunlight that warms me
moonlight that bathes me
rain that refreshes
The rain and the wind
bring new verses into the song I sing,
chord changes, shifts in melody –
as wind and rain in your life
make your song deeper, richer.
I sing to remind you of enough,
that God has thought of everything,
God’s love is rock you can put all your weight upon.
I sing with joy.
I’m singing with all my might,
so that you might hear me and join my song.
Sing out!
Prayer Poem on a Rock, Kate Heichler, September 2013
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
One person’s praise is another’s blasphemy. When the Pharisees heard Jesus’ disciples calling him the “King that comes in the name of the Lord,” they asked him to shut them up: Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Praise is part of the natural order in God’s world. Sometimes it’s obvious in a riotous sunset or an explosion of spring flowers, the grandeur of a waterfall, symphony of birdsong. But do stones really shout out the praises of the One who made them? One day I asked one. Sitting on a rock in the sun during a Spa for the Spirit morning retreat, it told me a lot:
I sing.
I sing of God’s love.
Even if I cold and solid and unmoving – I sing.
I sing a song rooted in ancient times
I have been singing, and the song has changed and grown –
oh, not so you could notice unless
you were watching for the past 20,000 years or so –
But I sing.
Of love unmoving, unmovable
I sing of earth, of lichen and moss
and living things that grow on me
I sing with birds, whose song blends with mine
I sing of grass and trees with whom I share this spot
of sunlight that warms me
moonlight that bathes me
rain that refreshes
The rain and the wind
bring new verses into the song I sing,
chord changes, shifts in melody –
as wind and rain in your life
make your song deeper, richer.
I sing to remind you of enough,
that God has thought of everything,
God’s love is rock you can put all your weight upon.
I sing with joy.
I’m singing with all my might,
so that you might hear me and join my song.
Sing out!
Prayer Poem on a Rock, Kate Heichler, September 2013
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
8-16-24 - Cultivating a God-Ward Heart
You can listen to this reflection here.
At week’s end let’s turn to Sunday’s epistle reading, still Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. This week’s snippet deals with how we cope with challenging times: Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
How do we make the most of the time when the days feel evil, when it seems to many like progress toward equity and wholeness has been rolled back on every front? Paul says we should try to understand the will of the Lord. That’s easier said than done, especially if we’re looking for prescriptions from heaven or trying to interpret signs. God’s will is rarely revealed in those ways.
We might focus more on comprehending how and where God is speaking in these times. It’s easy to know where God is not speaking – if the words or actions are contrary to scripture, to what we know of the life, teachings and actions of Jesus. God’s will is often evident wherever we find marks of the Holy Spirit at work, which we recognize by the fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, energy, miracles and such. We can always ask, where do we see good fruit?
Paul also cautions us to maintain a positive climate within and without: Do not get drunk with wine... but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As Christ-followers, we are invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We do that by cultivating spiritual practices like prayer and worship, scripture and journaling; by going where our hearts are fed – for me, that is certainly my cats and my deck and water and birds. Singing spiritual songs, whether we’re playing them in the car or humming them in the house, is a wonderful way to foster a God-ward heart.
And when our hearts are turned God-ward, we’re more apt to follow the last of Paul’s suggestions: giving thanks to God at all times and for everything in the name of Jesus. The best way to cultivate an orientation toward joy is to foster an attitude of gratitude. Giving thanks is often a verbal exercise, but gratitude need not be limited to what we say or pray. We can give thanks by being generous, by seeking ways to lighten someone else’s load, by choosing to walk around with a smile.
Praise and thanks are choices. Rare is the person whose life has been so harmonious and God-focused that praise and thanks come unbidden to their hearts. We must decide to praise God in all circumstances, even in times that feel evil or threatening. Especially in times that feel evil or threatening! Praise is a way of making God’s power present, invoking the Spirit, who praises through us.
At week’s end let’s turn to Sunday’s epistle reading, still Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. This week’s snippet deals with how we cope with challenging times: Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
How do we make the most of the time when the days feel evil, when it seems to many like progress toward equity and wholeness has been rolled back on every front? Paul says we should try to understand the will of the Lord. That’s easier said than done, especially if we’re looking for prescriptions from heaven or trying to interpret signs. God’s will is rarely revealed in those ways.
We might focus more on comprehending how and where God is speaking in these times. It’s easy to know where God is not speaking – if the words or actions are contrary to scripture, to what we know of the life, teachings and actions of Jesus. God’s will is often evident wherever we find marks of the Holy Spirit at work, which we recognize by the fruits like love, joy, peace, patience, energy, miracles and such. We can always ask, where do we see good fruit?
Paul also cautions us to maintain a positive climate within and without: Do not get drunk with wine... but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As Christ-followers, we are invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We do that by cultivating spiritual practices like prayer and worship, scripture and journaling; by going where our hearts are fed – for me, that is certainly my cats and my deck and water and birds. Singing spiritual songs, whether we’re playing them in the car or humming them in the house, is a wonderful way to foster a God-ward heart.
And when our hearts are turned God-ward, we’re more apt to follow the last of Paul’s suggestions: giving thanks to God at all times and for everything in the name of Jesus. The best way to cultivate an orientation toward joy is to foster an attitude of gratitude. Giving thanks is often a verbal exercise, but gratitude need not be limited to what we say or pray. We can give thanks by being generous, by seeking ways to lighten someone else’s load, by choosing to walk around with a smile.
Praise and thanks are choices. Rare is the person whose life has been so harmonious and God-focused that praise and thanks come unbidden to their hearts. We must decide to praise God in all circumstances, even in times that feel evil or threatening. Especially in times that feel evil or threatening! Praise is a way of making God’s power present, invoking the Spirit, who praises through us.
Praise is a spiritual practice we can learn, and work at, and hone, until it becomes our default position. A heart that praises provides the most hospitable environment for the Holy Spirit to dwell in. And then the times we live in come into perspective.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. 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.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. 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.
7-26-24 - Grounded In Love
You can listen to this reflection here.
At week’s end, let’s look at the epistle reading appointed for Sunday, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. There may be more than one letter contained in this document, as this section from the end of chapter 3 is a clear sign-off. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 start new threads. This “sign-off” is a beautiful, doxological prayer from the heart for Paul’s listeners – and, I think, for all those who would be followers of Christ. So let’s hear these words as if addressed to us: "I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name."
Paul begins as all prayers should, acknowledging the One to whom the prayer is made, the One who often has inspired the prayer in the first place. This naming of God, Father, Source roots us in the relationship of which our prayer is an expression. Then Paul asks of that Source specific gifts for his beloveds: "I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love."
How wonderful to think of being strengthened on the inside, that Christ might dwell in our hearts as we are rooted and grounded in love. Let’s stay with that for a moment – if Christ dwells in our hearts, we are rooted and grounded in love. Not rooted in condemnation or grounded in anxiety – rooted and grounded in love. Wow. Christ does dwell in us, by virtue of God’s promise to us in baptism, activated by our faith – so love is our foundation. Think about starting each day with that knowledge.
Paul knows how hard it is to hold that knowledge and live in it, so next he prays that his listeners – and all the saints, including us – may have the ability to grasp the full extent of that love: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
“To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” Our minds alone cannot know the fullness of God’s love; our minds are too small to contain such a mystery. We need to know it in our bodies, in our senses, in our spirits, in the beauty and intricacy and grandeur that surrounds us in this world. And we really only begin to grasp the extent of that love in community with others trying to know it. I daresay only in community can we be filled with the fullness of God.
So Paul ends with this doxology, recognizing that we are entirely reliant upon the power of God to know and to act out of the fullness of that love: "Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
God’s power – the power that made the heavens and the galaxies and the complexity of each cell – is at work in each of us. That power, not our own, enables us to accomplish things far beyond the realm of the possible, even more than we can imagine.
Only one thing is up to us, really: to invite and release that power, to believe that God can accomplish abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. If we just leave it sitting inside, nothing in this world will change. But if we let it out – look out! Love can change everything.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. 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.
At week’s end, let’s look at the epistle reading appointed for Sunday, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. There may be more than one letter contained in this document, as this section from the end of chapter 3 is a clear sign-off. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 start new threads. This “sign-off” is a beautiful, doxological prayer from the heart for Paul’s listeners – and, I think, for all those who would be followers of Christ. So let’s hear these words as if addressed to us: "I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name."
Paul begins as all prayers should, acknowledging the One to whom the prayer is made, the One who often has inspired the prayer in the first place. This naming of God, Father, Source roots us in the relationship of which our prayer is an expression. Then Paul asks of that Source specific gifts for his beloveds: "I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love."
How wonderful to think of being strengthened on the inside, that Christ might dwell in our hearts as we are rooted and grounded in love. Let’s stay with that for a moment – if Christ dwells in our hearts, we are rooted and grounded in love. Not rooted in condemnation or grounded in anxiety – rooted and grounded in love. Wow. Christ does dwell in us, by virtue of God’s promise to us in baptism, activated by our faith – so love is our foundation. Think about starting each day with that knowledge.
Paul knows how hard it is to hold that knowledge and live in it, so next he prays that his listeners – and all the saints, including us – may have the ability to grasp the full extent of that love: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
“To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” Our minds alone cannot know the fullness of God’s love; our minds are too small to contain such a mystery. We need to know it in our bodies, in our senses, in our spirits, in the beauty and intricacy and grandeur that surrounds us in this world. And we really only begin to grasp the extent of that love in community with others trying to know it. I daresay only in community can we be filled with the fullness of God.
So Paul ends with this doxology, recognizing that we are entirely reliant upon the power of God to know and to act out of the fullness of that love: "Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
God’s power – the power that made the heavens and the galaxies and the complexity of each cell – is at work in each of us. That power, not our own, enables us to accomplish things far beyond the realm of the possible, even more than we can imagine.
Only one thing is up to us, really: to invite and release that power, to believe that God can accomplish abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. If we just leave it sitting inside, nothing in this world will change. But if we let it out – look out! Love can change everything.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. 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.
8-17-22 - The Posture of Praise
You can listen to this reflection here.
Have you ever tried to praise God when you’re hunched over or miserable? Of all the types of prayer, praise is one of the most embodied. When we are filled with the Spirit of God, excited about what God is doing or has done in, through, or for us, we naturally straighten our spines, even extend our arms, open our hands. Our bodies participate with our minds and our spirits in the act of praise.
Praise is the first thing the crippled woman in our story did, as the effect of Jesus’ declaring healing on her took hold:
Have you ever tried to praise God when you’re hunched over or miserable? Of all the types of prayer, praise is one of the most embodied. When we are filled with the Spirit of God, excited about what God is doing or has done in, through, or for us, we naturally straighten our spines, even extend our arms, open our hands. Our bodies participate with our minds and our spirits in the act of praise.
Praise is the first thing the crippled woman in our story did, as the effect of Jesus’ declaring healing on her took hold:
Immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
Maybe she was exalting at being able to stand up straight for the first time in eighteen years; she was also participating in the prayer, inviting the Spirit to bless her into wholeness. Praise is one of the best conductors for healing power there is. When we’re praising God, it’s hard to focus on how sick, scared or miserable we are. Those things may still be there, but they’re not where we’re putting our energy.
Maybe praise releases endorphins – spiritual, if not chemical. Really exuberant praise, as at rock and roll shows or ball games, probably releases the chemical kind. When we release ourselves in praise, it also spreads good feelings to the people around us. There’s no downside to praising the One who made us, who heals us, who loves us.
Praise is a choice, an act of will. We choose to praise God for everything we know and believe about God, no matter what else is going on in our lives. It’s an act of will that opens us up to the power that makes us whole. Most of us need to practice praise; it doesn't come naturally. It can be hard to do with words, because we run out of them quickly. And it can feel funny to just repeat phrases like “God, I praise you. I honor you. I exalt you….” We don’t talk to people in our lives that way – we don’t have to be so stiff with God either. We can let our spirit take the lead.
Try praising God without words. Maybe sing a hymn or song you love, or bring up an image of beauty or love in your mind and thank God for that. And if something anxious or negative intrudes, gently say, “Not now. It’s praise time…”
We might invite our bodies to take the lead, opening ourselves into a posture of praise: sit or stand up straight; fill your lungs with deep, long, cleansing breaths; ask your arms how they would like to praise their maker. We might dance, or walk. If movement is difficult, we move what we can, and make that a prayer for restored mobility.
What if our posture was the first thing we address when we’re feeling stressed or sad or anxious? Remember that woman, bent over for so long, suddenly able to stand straight. She can be our model for the posture of praise.
Maybe she was exalting at being able to stand up straight for the first time in eighteen years; she was also participating in the prayer, inviting the Spirit to bless her into wholeness. Praise is one of the best conductors for healing power there is. When we’re praising God, it’s hard to focus on how sick, scared or miserable we are. Those things may still be there, but they’re not where we’re putting our energy.
Maybe praise releases endorphins – spiritual, if not chemical. Really exuberant praise, as at rock and roll shows or ball games, probably releases the chemical kind. When we release ourselves in praise, it also spreads good feelings to the people around us. There’s no downside to praising the One who made us, who heals us, who loves us.
Praise is a choice, an act of will. We choose to praise God for everything we know and believe about God, no matter what else is going on in our lives. It’s an act of will that opens us up to the power that makes us whole. Most of us need to practice praise; it doesn't come naturally. It can be hard to do with words, because we run out of them quickly. And it can feel funny to just repeat phrases like “God, I praise you. I honor you. I exalt you….” We don’t talk to people in our lives that way – we don’t have to be so stiff with God either. We can let our spirit take the lead.
Try praising God without words. Maybe sing a hymn or song you love, or bring up an image of beauty or love in your mind and thank God for that. And if something anxious or negative intrudes, gently say, “Not now. It’s praise time…”
We might invite our bodies to take the lead, opening ourselves into a posture of praise: sit or stand up straight; fill your lungs with deep, long, cleansing breaths; ask your arms how they would like to praise their maker. We might dance, or walk. If movement is difficult, we move what we can, and make that a prayer for restored mobility.
What if our posture was the first thing we address when we’re feeling stressed or sad or anxious? Remember that woman, bent over for so long, suddenly able to stand straight. She can be our model for the posture of praise.
4-8-22 - Do Stones Sing?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
One person’s praise is another’s blasphemy. When the Pharisees heard Jesus’ disciples calling him the “King that comes in the name of the Lord,” they asked him to shut them up: Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Praise is part of the natural order in God’s world. Sometimes it’s obvious in a riotous sunset or an explosion of spring flowers, the grandeur of waterfalls, symphony of birdsong. But do stones really shout out the praises of the One who made them? One day I asked one. Sitting on a rock in the sun during a Spa for the Spirit morning retreat, it told me a lot:
I sing.
I sing of God’s love.
Even if I cold and solid and unmoving – I sing.
I sing a song rooted in ancient times
I have been singing, and the song has changed and grown –
oh, not so you could notice unless
you were watching for the past 20,000 years or so –
But I sing.
Of love unmoving, unmovable
I sing of earth, of lichen and moss
and living things that grow on me
I sing with birds, whose song blends with mine
I sing of grass and trees with whom I share this spot
of sunlight that warms me
moonlight that bathes me
rain that refreshes
The rain and the wind
bring new verses into the song I sing,
chord changes, shifts in melody –
as wind and rain in your life
make your song deeper, richer.
I sing to remind you of enough,
that God has thought of everything,
God’s love is a rock you can put all your weight upon.
I sing with joy.
I’m singing with all my might,
so that you might hear me and join my song.
Sing out!
Prayer Poem on a Rock, Kate Heichler, September 2013
One person’s praise is another’s blasphemy. When the Pharisees heard Jesus’ disciples calling him the “King that comes in the name of the Lord,” they asked him to shut them up: Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Praise is part of the natural order in God’s world. Sometimes it’s obvious in a riotous sunset or an explosion of spring flowers, the grandeur of waterfalls, symphony of birdsong. But do stones really shout out the praises of the One who made them? One day I asked one. Sitting on a rock in the sun during a Spa for the Spirit morning retreat, it told me a lot:
I sing.
I sing of God’s love.
Even if I cold and solid and unmoving – I sing.
I sing a song rooted in ancient times
I have been singing, and the song has changed and grown –
oh, not so you could notice unless
you were watching for the past 20,000 years or so –
But I sing.
Of love unmoving, unmovable
I sing of earth, of lichen and moss
and living things that grow on me
I sing with birds, whose song blends with mine
I sing of grass and trees with whom I share this spot
of sunlight that warms me
moonlight that bathes me
rain that refreshes
The rain and the wind
bring new verses into the song I sing,
chord changes, shifts in melody –
as wind and rain in your life
make your song deeper, richer.
I sing to remind you of enough,
that God has thought of everything,
God’s love is a rock you can put all your weight upon.
I sing with joy.
I’m singing with all my might,
so that you might hear me and join my song.
Sing out!
Prayer Poem on a Rock, Kate Heichler, September 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)