2-4-26 - Gathering Light

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

Someone once asked me if I see better with my contact lenses than with glasses. I replied, “Actually, I see less well with them. But I don’t wear contacts to see better – I wear them to be seen better.” Vanity, vanity.

When Jesus tells his followers, “You are the light of the world,” he seems to mean light less as something that helps you see, than as something that helps you to be seen. “A city built on a hill cannot be hid,” he points out.

And, lest they don’t connect cities on hills and lights of the worlds, he goes domestic: “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Perhaps Jesus' original followers were Anglicans – faithful and devoted, but not wanting anyone around them to know that. "Shhhhh – I go to church… I believe in God… I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but I don't want anybody to know….” Maybe they figured everyone already knew. Maybe they figured modesty was a virtue.

Well, guess what? It’s not a virtue when it comes to talking about our faith! When we are proclaiming the incredible news that God is on a mission to love the world back into wholeness, we are invited to be as loud and immodest as we possibly can. There are a lot of people with broken parts who need to hear that news, you and I among them.

So many in Christ’s church are so quiet about the power of God’s life in the world – maybe as a consequence of living in cultures where Christianity dominates. Well, those days are over. Many people around us were raised in secular homes, and have never heard that church is about anything but money and judgment, and they know little about Jesus. The world needs the light we carry, and we need to shine it brightly to give light to “all in the house.”

We need to let our good works show, not so we can get the credit, but so we can highlight God's power, and so we can inspire others to join us. Sometimes the “good works” we do – the outreach projects, shelter meals, advocacy, visiting ministries – are the easiest place for people we know to join us in our faith lives. And once they’re working with us, it’s not so hard to share how we are fed spiritually.

• Where in your life do you most feel you are most visible as “the light of the world?” Where are you least?
• What is it about the first that allows you to be “out” as a Christ-follower, or hope-bearer? What is it about the second that inhibits you?
• What are you most proud of in your Christian life? Can you broadcast that, show it off? It glorifies God when we give thanks for what God is doing through us.

Elsewhere in the gospels we read that Jesus is the Light of the world, and here he says we are. That’s a part of his identity we get to share. If he calls us that, we can be sure he will fill us with his light – and his light doesn’t quit. His light conquers the darkness. His light sets up a glow in us that the whole world can see - as we let it shine.

© 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.

1-20-26 - A Great Light

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

“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”  

Matthew’s gospel often matches the events of Jesus’ life with prophecies from Israel’s past. So here he links the place where Jesus makes a home to a promise from Isaiah:  He… made his home in Capernaum by the lake, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 'Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’ 

It is easy to envision people stuck in dim light, just going about their business with little hope of transformation or power. I imagine living rooms lit only by the flicker of screens – televisions, game consoles, computer monitors. I think of people disconnected from hope, from joy, from God, from one another, and in a profound sense from themselves. We all know “people who sit in darkness… in the region and shadow of death.”

Our sacred story rests heavily on the theme of darkness and light. This metaphor is one of the most prominent by which the followers of Jesus, and those who came after them, sought to make meaning of this story that held so much life for them – and for us. And the theme resonates with us in all times, especially times that feel so dark as now.

Our claim as Christ-followers is that God has broken into those dimly lit rooms with light - not only light, but a Great Light. The reality of what God is up to in the humanity of Christ shines a light bright enough to transform the deepest darkness. And we are bearers of that light. The One who called himself the Light of the World also said to his followers, “You are lights for the world.”

When you think of “people who sit in darkness,” who comes to your mind? An individual? A community? Hold that person or group in your mind’s eye, and imagine light shining on them. Not just a little light – a steadily growing light getting brighter and brighter, just bathing that person in its glow.

This is a way of praying for people, using our imaginations. It is a way of picturing God’s blessing. And, because when we pray we are inviting the power of heaven to be made real here on earth (“on earth, as it is in heaven…”), we can believe that God is blessing that person or persons. And us, as we hold them up to the light. It shines on us too.

The light has not gone away. And it shines not only on "the road by the sea, across the Jordan…" It shines in our own lives and communities. It shines through us. And the darker the world gets, the brighter the light we bring.

© 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.

12-26-24 - Life and Light

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

In this week's gospel passage we read about life and light, light overcoming darkness. And last Saturday we marked the longest night of the year. We’ve experienced increasing darkness all through Advent –not only with the shortening of days. Now comes the promise that light will prevail: What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

I once had a very vivid dream. I was driving a car in a strange city, my parents in the back seat. In this city, all the hospitality businesses – hotels, restaurants, bars – were in one part of town, and we were looking for a particular hotel driveway. But there were no lights. Nothing. No car lights, no street lights, no lights in windows, nothing. Pitch black. We were hurtling through the dark, looking for this driveway, with no way to see. It was very scary.

And then someone in the back said, “Have you tried the infra-red lights?” And I flicked a switch on the dashboard, and boom! All the lights sprang out. Street lights, lights from cars, lights in windows. They’d all been there, but we couldn’t see them without the infra-red lights.

It seemed to me the next morning that this had been a God dream – but I wasn’t sure what it meant, until a few years later I learned how infra-red works, which I had not known when I had the dream. Infra-red vision works by detecting heat; it sees where life is, and that shows up as light. Life is light. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of humankind.” I gradually realized that this dream was about seeing with the eyes of faith, seeing what is already fully here but not visible without faith vision.

The life of God is here already, full, vibrant, but we need faith vision to see it. In Christ, we have been given that vision, to see the life that is coming, to see the life that is. As we become able to focus on this future that is already here, we can anticipate with hope, expecting blessing. We are able to believe that healing can come in the starkest of situations, conversion in the darkest of hearts.

And we come to see that what looks like complete darkness is in fact a beautiful night in a wonderful city – we might even say a city of blinding lights – lit by the Light of the World.

© 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.

12-27-23 - Witnessing To Light

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

The cosmic first paragraph of John’s gospel ends with a declaration for all time: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

And then the writer brings us down to earth with a thud, introducing his first human character. One might expect that person to be this Word, this Life, this Light, but no – the first one to be mentioned is John the Baptist:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

A little later in the Gospel, we will hear John himself clarify his identity as one who testifies, who is not himself the light. John was God’s messenger, and like all God’s messengers, he pointed not to himself, but to the Life of God. In the darkness of his era, he pointed to the Light.

Many perceive a deep darkness in our current age, as the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider, human rights are narrowed, and despots stoke nationalistic fervor in their followers. In response to global and national events, some careen from outrage to terror to disgust at seeing basic freedoms jeopardized by strongmen who seem to delight in division and destruction, who privilege the already privileged at the expense of the vulnerable, and seem to glory in the devastation humankind is wreaking on the wondrous beauty of this world and its creatures. It can be hard to be hopeful.

On the personal plane, depression and addiction, suicide and despair are disconcertingly prevalent, while the resources for helping those caught in these cycles get stretched thinner. As mistrust among people and with religious organizations grows, the sense of darkness enshrouding us gets stronger. What about that light who has overcome the darkness?

Yes. The Light of the world is still here. He still resides in us, and we are still called to testify to the reality of him, and not only when we feel like it. As it was for John, it needs to become part of our deepest identity. If we trust the Light is real, the Light is true, the Light is here; if we have seen Christ shine light into shadow places, to heal and restore and renew what is broken; then we have testimony to offer.

And boy, do we need to hear it. It can be hard to see where hope lies. When the clouds gather, I need to remember that this is my call, my mission, not just as an ordained person but as a Christ follower. In fact, I once head God tell me in prayer that I was to develop my ability to see in the dark. To do that, I have to trust in the Light I carry.

What is the darkest place you know of right now? Who is in the deepest despair?
Go, and testify there to the Light you know, the light you have known. Perhaps that is all the church is supposed to be doing right now, testifying to the Light who is Jesus. This Light has an interesting property - it gets brighter and stronger in this world the more we point it out. Everybody wins.

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