You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus set a pretty high bar for friendship. On his last night in human life, he told his followers, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I don’t know many people likely to be asked to lay down their lives for friends, though some under persecution or threat of war are faced with such choices. The highest sacrifice asked of most of us is that we lay aside our prerogatives, preferences, convenience for our friends.
But Jesus knew what was ahead – for him, and for his friends. The persecution unleashed after Jesus' arrest, crucifixion and resurrection would eventually claim the lives of most of those with him at that momentous Last Supper. Before they could offer that kind of sacrifice, though, they would have to be willing to truly love each other. Jesus had said that keeping his commandments would enable them to abide in his love. “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Now he spells out the heart of that mandatum novum (look it up!). “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
"But we do love each other," they may have thought. They had spent three years in close quarters and sometimes no quarters at all. But the gospels tell us how much squabbling and jockeying went on among these disciples. And no matter what affection they may have felt, Jesus was now upping the stakes: they were to love each other as he loved them. His was a love that laid down everything to draw near them, that bore their misjudgments and inability to grasp the values of God he was trying to inculcate in them. His was a love that would ultimately lead to a sacrificial death, and then an empty grave and new life eternally.
These men and women were to be the agents of sharing that new life with the world. They couldn’t do that if they didn’t love each other as Jesus had loved them. And so he commanded them to love, even unto death.
We are the beneficiaries of their love. The legacy they left, the Church, even with all the strains and dysfunction common to human institutions, became an incubator from which sacrificial love can pour out in God’s mission. That kind of love is asked of us if we are to be part of God’s mission to reclaim, restore, and renew all things to wholeness.
How do we love like that? We begin by allowing Jesus to love us like that, truly taking in the depth and breadth of his love, not only “back then” but now, forever and always. Those moments in which we grasp the extent of God’s love for us, deserved or not, help form us as vessels of that love for others. We can also ask Jesus to show us his love for people we find it a challenge to love. His vision can help us love people when it’s difficult to get past what we see and hear in them.
The church of Jesus Christ is increasingly divided among factions and peoples who find it nearly impossible to "love one another as he has loved us." This saps the power of our proclamation. We have ample opportunity to practice loving those who interpret the Good News in ways that radically diverge from our ways of seeing, who seem to us to miss the whole point of Jesus’ grace and love. That's who we are commanded to love. Yikes! Yet if we can find a way to love one another across the barriers that separate us… I do believe the world might finally know that Love of which we are stewards.
© 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.
4-30-24 - Joy
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Joy is an elusive state of being. We cannot achieve it; we can only receive it. We can't acquire joy by striving, or by talking about it. I’ve tried. Yet joy is something Jesus wants his followers to possess: "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
Joy defies easy definition. It is not the same as happiness or contentment, though it shares attributes with those conditions. It goes deeper, a way of being and seeing that comes from our core and gives us a sense of “alrightness” no matter what our circumstances. It takes deep faith, decisive faith to believe that “all things shall be well” in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. The evidence God provides, of resurrection life triumphing over evil and degradation, disease and death, can seem flimsy in the face of what our natural senses tell us. Yet the joyful are able to proclaim life in the face of death, not denying the reality of pain and evil, yet living in the "already" of Christ’s victory over these ills.
Joy cannot be acquired or fabricated, but it can be cultivated. We can expand our capacity to receive Christ's joy. We can take the kernel that is in us, a promised gift of the Spirit, and help it to grow. How do we cultivate and increase our capacity for joy?
We start with the spiritual practice of gratitude. Gratitude waters the seeds of joy in us. Calling to mind God’s gifts to us, unexpected blessings, all the times things do work out against the odds, or in spite of them, creates an climate in us in which joy can grow and flourish. Similarly, compassion for ourselves and others nurtures a climate in which joy can thrive.
We can also flex our “joy muscles.” We must decide to be people of joy, apart from how we feel on a given day or hour. If we accept that joy is a gift of the Spirit, and we accept that Jesus names it as a mark of Christ-followers, we can commit ourselves to letting it grow in us. So often we let anxiety or grief take root in us, sometimes so deeply we can’t imagine life without them. What if we allow God to plant the seed of joy that deep in us, to gradually uproot and replace those life-squashing states of being?
What is your relationship to joy? Is it familiar to you, or rare? Some of us didn’t learn joy growing up, or have had it suppressed by circumstances. We need to make space for it now, as a choice and a decision.
If we accept that God has already planted the seed of joy in us, then we water it and weed around it and make sure it gets plenty of sunlight. We water it with gratitude and compassion and generosity. We weed away the cares and preoccupations that threaten to choke our joy – worry, envy, competitiveness, greed, gluttony – the usual suspects. And we give it plenty of exposure to the light of the Son in prayer and worship and mission.
Jesus told his followers he wanted their joy to be complete. Not just a little – the whole deal. We can feel and show forth joy in times of trial and sadness, stress and adversity. There is so much damage and loss and trauma in our world. We can invite joy to spring up in the midst of our fear and grief. Sometimes, like the light cast by a beacon on a stormy night, joy is most visible in the dark.
© 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.
Joy is an elusive state of being. We cannot achieve it; we can only receive it. We can't acquire joy by striving, or by talking about it. I’ve tried. Yet joy is something Jesus wants his followers to possess: "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”
Joy defies easy definition. It is not the same as happiness or contentment, though it shares attributes with those conditions. It goes deeper, a way of being and seeing that comes from our core and gives us a sense of “alrightness” no matter what our circumstances. It takes deep faith, decisive faith to believe that “all things shall be well” in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. The evidence God provides, of resurrection life triumphing over evil and degradation, disease and death, can seem flimsy in the face of what our natural senses tell us. Yet the joyful are able to proclaim life in the face of death, not denying the reality of pain and evil, yet living in the "already" of Christ’s victory over these ills.
Joy cannot be acquired or fabricated, but it can be cultivated. We can expand our capacity to receive Christ's joy. We can take the kernel that is in us, a promised gift of the Spirit, and help it to grow. How do we cultivate and increase our capacity for joy?
We start with the spiritual practice of gratitude. Gratitude waters the seeds of joy in us. Calling to mind God’s gifts to us, unexpected blessings, all the times things do work out against the odds, or in spite of them, creates an climate in us in which joy can grow and flourish. Similarly, compassion for ourselves and others nurtures a climate in which joy can thrive.
We can also flex our “joy muscles.” We must decide to be people of joy, apart from how we feel on a given day or hour. If we accept that joy is a gift of the Spirit, and we accept that Jesus names it as a mark of Christ-followers, we can commit ourselves to letting it grow in us. So often we let anxiety or grief take root in us, sometimes so deeply we can’t imagine life without them. What if we allow God to plant the seed of joy that deep in us, to gradually uproot and replace those life-squashing states of being?
What is your relationship to joy? Is it familiar to you, or rare? Some of us didn’t learn joy growing up, or have had it suppressed by circumstances. We need to make space for it now, as a choice and a decision.
If we accept that God has already planted the seed of joy in us, then we water it and weed around it and make sure it gets plenty of sunlight. We water it with gratitude and compassion and generosity. We weed away the cares and preoccupations that threaten to choke our joy – worry, envy, competitiveness, greed, gluttony – the usual suspects. And we give it plenty of exposure to the light of the Son in prayer and worship and mission.
Jesus told his followers he wanted their joy to be complete. Not just a little – the whole deal. We can feel and show forth joy in times of trial and sadness, stress and adversity. There is so much damage and loss and trauma in our world. We can invite joy to spring up in the midst of our fear and grief. Sometimes, like the light cast by a beacon on a stormy night, joy is most visible in the dark.
© 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.
4-29-24 - Love and Commandments
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Here are two things I don’t like to mix: love and commandments. Since when is keeping commandments a sign of love? What happened to flowers and chocolate? Oh, it starts out okay; Jesus tells his followers, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”
That I get - the love which we have received is what we give to others; love is something we can abide in, hang out with. That sounds beautiful and comforting and profound and unconditional. But Jesus isn’t finished: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
I know the psalms talk about how “the law of the Lord" is sweet like honey, but I think of commandments as “should” and love as “want to” and never the twain shall meet. This verse makes it sound as if God’s love is not unconditional at all, but highly contingent upon our ability to obey. Since I prize unconditional love above all theological concepts, and think attempts at obedience usually end in failure, disappointment and self-condemnation, I react negatively to this word.
What if we change the “if” to an “as?” Might Jesus be saying not, “If you keep my commandments, I will keep loving you,” but, “As you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” There is no change to the love in which we are invited to abide, only to our capacity for experiencing that love. Keeping Jesus’ commandments, he is saying, makes us better able to swim in the love of God flowing to, through and around us at all times. It puts us in the “head space” and “heart space” to receive – and give – the love of God.
Jesus made visible God’s love for humanity. He lived it, taught it, demonstrated it, and finally died and rose again to complete it here on earth. He says it was his fidelity to God’s commandments that made him able to manifest God’s love. Similarly, our fidelity to his commandments enables us to show forth his love in this world. We need only recall times when we’ve been in the grip of attitudes or behaviors that were outside of God’s will to know how easily our ability to love can become compromised.
Could it be that God’s commandments are not about our ability to “be good,” but intended rather to enable us to be Love? Perhaps I think of commandments as more guilt-inducing than loving because trying to live into God’s commands without the power of God’s love at work in us is an uphill climb. With God’s love flowing through us, it becomes more like riding a bike with plenty of gears, so we can keep a steady pace no matter what the terrain.
Where are you experiencing a lot of love in your life, from God or other people, or from yourself toward others? Where is it a little choked off? Are there adjustments you can make to the way you are thinking, acting, loving, to become more Christ-like?
It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. We can’t fully live into God’s commands without God’s love in us, and we can’t fully abide in God’s love without living the way God commands us. As we increase in each area, the other increases too – the more we abide in God’s love, the easier it is to live God’s way, until we discover that living God’s way opens us to more love than we could ever imagine. Now that's Good News!
© 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.
Here are two things I don’t like to mix: love and commandments. Since when is keeping commandments a sign of love? What happened to flowers and chocolate? Oh, it starts out okay; Jesus tells his followers, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”
That I get - the love which we have received is what we give to others; love is something we can abide in, hang out with. That sounds beautiful and comforting and profound and unconditional. But Jesus isn’t finished: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
I know the psalms talk about how “the law of the Lord" is sweet like honey, but I think of commandments as “should” and love as “want to” and never the twain shall meet. This verse makes it sound as if God’s love is not unconditional at all, but highly contingent upon our ability to obey. Since I prize unconditional love above all theological concepts, and think attempts at obedience usually end in failure, disappointment and self-condemnation, I react negatively to this word.
What if we change the “if” to an “as?” Might Jesus be saying not, “If you keep my commandments, I will keep loving you,” but, “As you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” There is no change to the love in which we are invited to abide, only to our capacity for experiencing that love. Keeping Jesus’ commandments, he is saying, makes us better able to swim in the love of God flowing to, through and around us at all times. It puts us in the “head space” and “heart space” to receive – and give – the love of God.
Jesus made visible God’s love for humanity. He lived it, taught it, demonstrated it, and finally died and rose again to complete it here on earth. He says it was his fidelity to God’s commandments that made him able to manifest God’s love. Similarly, our fidelity to his commandments enables us to show forth his love in this world. We need only recall times when we’ve been in the grip of attitudes or behaviors that were outside of God’s will to know how easily our ability to love can become compromised.
Could it be that God’s commandments are not about our ability to “be good,” but intended rather to enable us to be Love? Perhaps I think of commandments as more guilt-inducing than loving because trying to live into God’s commands without the power of God’s love at work in us is an uphill climb. With God’s love flowing through us, it becomes more like riding a bike with plenty of gears, so we can keep a steady pace no matter what the terrain.
Where are you experiencing a lot of love in your life, from God or other people, or from yourself toward others? Where is it a little choked off? Are there adjustments you can make to the way you are thinking, acting, loving, to become more Christ-like?
It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. We can’t fully live into God’s commands without God’s love in us, and we can’t fully abide in God’s love without living the way God commands us. As we increase in each area, the other increases too – the more we abide in God’s love, the easier it is to live God’s way, until we discover that living God’s way opens us to more love than we could ever imagine. Now that's Good News!
© 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.
4-26-24 - Connected
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
“Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
Context is everything. In some instances, these words could sound insufferably egomaniacal, pompous, even abusive. Spoken by Jesus, to his closest followers, shortly before he takes leave of them forever? They sound like loving truth about where the power for ministry comes from. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
If we’re talking vines and branches, it’s clear: the branch cannot generate fruit if it is cut off from the vine. And a branch cut off from the vine, whether by pruning shears or by withering, is good for nothing. But what about when we’re talking people? Disciples? Can there be no good done in the world without its doers being connected to Jesus?
This passage does not address that question. Jesus is talking here to insiders, believers, disciples. He has been training them in the ways of that realm he called the Kingdom of God, equipping them to participate in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness. THAT fruit, he says, is not possible apart from him. There might be many holy people, makers of peace, bringers of justice who have no discernible connection to God in Jesus Christ. But ministers of the Good News? We need to be connected to the Vine.
What kind of nutrients come through a vine to its branches and ultimately the fruit they bear? There are sugars and enzymes needed for growth, for warding off diseases, for the formation of fruit. As the vine harnesses nutrients from its roots in the soil and the water it receives, and chemicals catalyzed by the sunshine, it passes along to the branches what they need to be as whole and life-giving as possible. And the only way the branch gets what it needs to be fruitful is through staying connected to the vine.
Let’s transfer the metaphor to us. Jesus says he is the Vine, we are the branches. He is rooted in the long tradition of God's activity since before time began. He is himself the source of Living Water. He is glorified in the light of God; indeed, he is the Light of the World. Through our connection to him – united with him in baptism, renewed in him in prayer, eucharist and mission– we receive everything we need to exercise ministries of transformation.
And how do we stay connected? By spending time with him in prayer; by gathering with other branches regularly; through the Word, the sacraments; through the exercise of ministry in his Name – which means letting his Spirit work amazing things through us. We can feel the difference between doing good work on our own strength, and how it feels when we're running on Holy Spirit wind. When we allow ourselves to be filled and "loved through," those nutrients come through to us from the Vine.
Branches are not responsible for the fruit they bear. We just need to be as connected as possible, and if the vine is healthy, the fruit will grow. Our Vine is Jesus – we can trust there will be wonderful fruit as we are faithful. Here endeth the metaphor!
© 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.
“Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
Context is everything. In some instances, these words could sound insufferably egomaniacal, pompous, even abusive. Spoken by Jesus, to his closest followers, shortly before he takes leave of them forever? They sound like loving truth about where the power for ministry comes from. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
If we’re talking vines and branches, it’s clear: the branch cannot generate fruit if it is cut off from the vine. And a branch cut off from the vine, whether by pruning shears or by withering, is good for nothing. But what about when we’re talking people? Disciples? Can there be no good done in the world without its doers being connected to Jesus?
This passage does not address that question. Jesus is talking here to insiders, believers, disciples. He has been training them in the ways of that realm he called the Kingdom of God, equipping them to participate in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness. THAT fruit, he says, is not possible apart from him. There might be many holy people, makers of peace, bringers of justice who have no discernible connection to God in Jesus Christ. But ministers of the Good News? We need to be connected to the Vine.
What kind of nutrients come through a vine to its branches and ultimately the fruit they bear? There are sugars and enzymes needed for growth, for warding off diseases, for the formation of fruit. As the vine harnesses nutrients from its roots in the soil and the water it receives, and chemicals catalyzed by the sunshine, it passes along to the branches what they need to be as whole and life-giving as possible. And the only way the branch gets what it needs to be fruitful is through staying connected to the vine.
Let’s transfer the metaphor to us. Jesus says he is the Vine, we are the branches. He is rooted in the long tradition of God's activity since before time began. He is himself the source of Living Water. He is glorified in the light of God; indeed, he is the Light of the World. Through our connection to him – united with him in baptism, renewed in him in prayer, eucharist and mission– we receive everything we need to exercise ministries of transformation.
And how do we stay connected? By spending time with him in prayer; by gathering with other branches regularly; through the Word, the sacraments; through the exercise of ministry in his Name – which means letting his Spirit work amazing things through us. We can feel the difference between doing good work on our own strength, and how it feels when we're running on Holy Spirit wind. When we allow ourselves to be filled and "loved through," those nutrients come through to us from the Vine.
Branches are not responsible for the fruit they bear. We just need to be as connected as possible, and if the vine is healthy, the fruit will grow. Our Vine is Jesus – we can trust there will be wonderful fruit as we are faithful. Here endeth the metaphor!
© 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.
4-25-24 - Fruitful
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.A few years ago, inspired by a neighbor’s lovely pineapple plant, I planted the top of a pineapple. It grew, and I managed to keep it alive for several years, and then last fall brought it into my office, which gets abundant sunshine. It thrived… and this winter I happened to look down one day and was amazed to see a teeny-tiny pineapple growing on it! Fruit! Fruit is one of God's greatest gifts. And, according to Jesus, fruitfulness is the one criterion for success as a follower of Christ: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing... My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” And later in this long teaching, he adds, “You did not choose me. I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. ”(John 15:16).
What does it mean to be fruitful? It goes deeper than simply being productive. Productivity involves generating outcomes and measurable results, things you can tick off a task list. Fruitfulness obviously includes a product – the fruit – but fruit develops in different ways on varying timetables. And we don’t “produce” fruit – we grow it. Or we allow it to grow; we can't make it grow. We can only create the right circumstances for it to grow. And we can't hurry it along. (Somebody tell tomato growers that...).
I love productivity – especially if I have produced things I can see: articles, songs, sermons, newsletters, gardens, a clean floor. On a day with many pastoral appointments and meetings, I sometimes have trouble feeling I’ve “done” anything, because I can’t see or measure the outcomes – but those are deeply fruitful days. Jesus invites me to value fruitfulness even more than productivity.
How can we assess fruitfulness? We look for changed lives. When we see people changing, healing, growing, turning God-ward, we are seeing good fruit. When we bring justice or peace or reconciliation to a community, we are seeing good fruit. When we experience greater joy and more love in our lives, we are seeing good fruit.
Where in your life do you feel the most fruitful? What branches seem barren, producing little? What fruit do you feel is still forming in your life?
Does it have the water, sun and nutrients it needs? How might you foster greater growth?
What fruit do you see, and would like to see in your community of faith? How might you help cultivate greater fruitfulness, more changed lives? Fruit forms well as it is attached to the plant that nourishes it. Our fruitfulness in life, and as followers of Christ, flourishes as we allow God’s Spirit to flow through us, to form and ripen us and our ideas, to bring us to the fullness of who we are intended to be. Then we bring delight to others, just like a luscious peach or a perfect pineapple!
© 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.
What does it mean to be fruitful? It goes deeper than simply being productive. Productivity involves generating outcomes and measurable results, things you can tick off a task list. Fruitfulness obviously includes a product – the fruit – but fruit develops in different ways on varying timetables. And we don’t “produce” fruit – we grow it. Or we allow it to grow; we can't make it grow. We can only create the right circumstances for it to grow. And we can't hurry it along. (Somebody tell tomato growers that...).
I love productivity – especially if I have produced things I can see: articles, songs, sermons, newsletters, gardens, a clean floor. On a day with many pastoral appointments and meetings, I sometimes have trouble feeling I’ve “done” anything, because I can’t see or measure the outcomes – but those are deeply fruitful days. Jesus invites me to value fruitfulness even more than productivity.
How can we assess fruitfulness? We look for changed lives. When we see people changing, healing, growing, turning God-ward, we are seeing good fruit. When we bring justice or peace or reconciliation to a community, we are seeing good fruit. When we experience greater joy and more love in our lives, we are seeing good fruit.
Where in your life do you feel the most fruitful? What branches seem barren, producing little? What fruit do you feel is still forming in your life?
Does it have the water, sun and nutrients it needs? How might you foster greater growth?
What fruit do you see, and would like to see in your community of faith? How might you help cultivate greater fruitfulness, more changed lives? Fruit forms well as it is attached to the plant that nourishes it. Our fruitfulness in life, and as followers of Christ, flourishes as we allow God’s Spirit to flow through us, to form and ripen us and our ideas, to bring us to the fullness of who we are intended to be. Then we bring delight to others, just like a luscious peach or a perfect pineapple!
© 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.4-23-24 - Pruning
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I was given a rose bush six years ago which blooms frequently and has done better than expected, given that I just plunked it in the ground. But I don’t know the first thing about if, how or when to prune it to make it healthier. Pruning is a painful process. No one wants to cut into living things, or beautiful ones, though a gardener or farmer – or surgeon – will do so in order to allow a plant to become as healthy and fruitful as possible.
Jesus said that even God is in the pruning business: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”
Jesus talks both about the cutting away of non-fruitful branches, and the cutting back of fruitful ones. Nothing seems to be exempt from the pruning shears.
We prune to conserve resources so that the fruitful parts receive maximum nutrients. The same is true in our lives – and churches. Too many branches dissipate the focus and energy available to each one. Not every part bears good fruit. Some used to, and are now past the point of producing. We must undertake pruning processes, or allow God to work them within us.
Are there aspects to your life or work or relationships that no longer feel fruitful? Patterns of thinking or behaving or relating that are not life-giving? Make a list today of “branches” you might be willing to cut away, leave behind entirely.
As you read through that list, where do you feel the greatest sense of loss or failure? Where the most relief?
Pray through it with Jesus and/or discuss it with a spiritual adviser or friend. Then act on what you've discerned.
What areas of your life, work or relationships feel fruitful? Are there ways you can prune or refine your involvement in them to allow for even more growth?
There’s an old adage that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I suggest the same is true of an “unpruned life.” It resembles an overgrown garden – hard to move around in, lacking in differentiation and clarity, with healthy growth often impeded by weeds and undergrowth. Undergrowth! There’s a great term. That which is overgrown becomes undergrowth. If we want to see growth in our lives and our spirits, not to mention our ministries, bring on the pruning.
© 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.
I was given a rose bush six years ago which blooms frequently and has done better than expected, given that I just plunked it in the ground. But I don’t know the first thing about if, how or when to prune it to make it healthier. Pruning is a painful process. No one wants to cut into living things, or beautiful ones, though a gardener or farmer – or surgeon – will do so in order to allow a plant to become as healthy and fruitful as possible.
Jesus said that even God is in the pruning business: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”
Jesus talks both about the cutting away of non-fruitful branches, and the cutting back of fruitful ones. Nothing seems to be exempt from the pruning shears.
We prune to conserve resources so that the fruitful parts receive maximum nutrients. The same is true in our lives – and churches. Too many branches dissipate the focus and energy available to each one. Not every part bears good fruit. Some used to, and are now past the point of producing. We must undertake pruning processes, or allow God to work them within us.
Are there aspects to your life or work or relationships that no longer feel fruitful? Patterns of thinking or behaving or relating that are not life-giving? Make a list today of “branches” you might be willing to cut away, leave behind entirely.
As you read through that list, where do you feel the greatest sense of loss or failure? Where the most relief?
Pray through it with Jesus and/or discuss it with a spiritual adviser or friend. Then act on what you've discerned.
What areas of your life, work or relationships feel fruitful? Are there ways you can prune or refine your involvement in them to allow for even more growth?
There’s an old adage that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I suggest the same is true of an “unpruned life.” It resembles an overgrown garden – hard to move around in, lacking in differentiation and clarity, with healthy growth often impeded by weeds and undergrowth. Undergrowth! There’s a great term. That which is overgrown becomes undergrowth. If we want to see growth in our lives and our spirits, not to mention our ministries, bring on the pruning.
© 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.
4-24-24 - Abiding
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
“Abide” is not a word we use these days the way it is used in the Bible. Which is a pity – it’s a good word, much richer than its nearest contemporary equivalent, “hang out with.”
A Google search reminded me that we do use the word – in the sense of something we comply with, or barely tolerate (“I will abide by the ruling”; “I can’t abide eggplant.”) But the meaning in this week’s gospel passage is nothing like that. It means to dwell with over time. Abiding suggests resting with deeply, not rushing away. Oh! Maybe that’s why we don’t use it these days – we do so much rushing, so little “resting with deeply,” “ staying quietly with.”
Jesus used the term that our forebears translated as “abide” quite a bit, especially in these farewell remarks captured in John’s Gospel. He uses it as a verb and as an imperative: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.”
This image conveys an even stronger notion of connectedness. To abide as a grape abides in the vine suggests that it both comes from and is connected with the vine, so connected it would take some force to part one from the other. This is not to undermine distinction and independence. It is a connection intended for greater fruitfulness: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
How do we abide with Jesus and let him abide in us? We hang out with him in prayer and conversation and praise and worship. We recover our awareness of how we are connected to him, despite the efforts of the world and its messages and the pressures of our lives to shake us loose. It is easy to feel disconnected from God except in those times when we consciously return. How would it be to carry that felt connection around with us daily?
That can happen as we live into the second part – letting Jesus abide in us. We are promised that Jesus lives in us through baptism, a connection that is renewed at eucharist, through the Word, through prayer and ministry. So one way we abide with him and he in us is to make more space for him. Don’t toss him in a back room, stopping by to visit only when you’re feeling sad or stressed. Give him a seat at the table, when you’re doing dishes, paying bills, going to sleep. Don’t relegate him to a few moments here and there; make some time to nurture your connection.
Some monastics have practiced a form of constant prayer called “hesychasm,” the prayer of the heart, which trains one to pray with each breath, in and out, so that practitioners pray without ceasing. Whether we adopt that practice, or set alerts on our phones, or set aside times and places to rest deeply with Jesus, he promises us a more fruitful life through that connection. And we can be sure HE is abiding with us, even when we’re rushing off somewhere that feels more important.
© 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.
“Abide” is not a word we use these days the way it is used in the Bible. Which is a pity – it’s a good word, much richer than its nearest contemporary equivalent, “hang out with.”
A Google search reminded me that we do use the word – in the sense of something we comply with, or barely tolerate (“I will abide by the ruling”; “I can’t abide eggplant.”) But the meaning in this week’s gospel passage is nothing like that. It means to dwell with over time. Abiding suggests resting with deeply, not rushing away. Oh! Maybe that’s why we don’t use it these days – we do so much rushing, so little “resting with deeply,” “ staying quietly with.”
Jesus used the term that our forebears translated as “abide” quite a bit, especially in these farewell remarks captured in John’s Gospel. He uses it as a verb and as an imperative: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.”
This image conveys an even stronger notion of connectedness. To abide as a grape abides in the vine suggests that it both comes from and is connected with the vine, so connected it would take some force to part one from the other. This is not to undermine distinction and independence. It is a connection intended for greater fruitfulness: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
How do we abide with Jesus and let him abide in us? We hang out with him in prayer and conversation and praise and worship. We recover our awareness of how we are connected to him, despite the efforts of the world and its messages and the pressures of our lives to shake us loose. It is easy to feel disconnected from God except in those times when we consciously return. How would it be to carry that felt connection around with us daily?
That can happen as we live into the second part – letting Jesus abide in us. We are promised that Jesus lives in us through baptism, a connection that is renewed at eucharist, through the Word, through prayer and ministry. So one way we abide with him and he in us is to make more space for him. Don’t toss him in a back room, stopping by to visit only when you’re feeling sad or stressed. Give him a seat at the table, when you’re doing dishes, paying bills, going to sleep. Don’t relegate him to a few moments here and there; make some time to nurture your connection.
Some monastics have practiced a form of constant prayer called “hesychasm,” the prayer of the heart, which trains one to pray with each breath, in and out, so that practitioners pray without ceasing. Whether we adopt that practice, or set alerts on our phones, or set aside times and places to rest deeply with Jesus, he promises us a more fruitful life through that connection. And we can be sure HE is abiding with us, even when we’re rushing off somewhere that feels more important.
© 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.
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