Read Luke 13:1–9
The practice of digging around a tree is common when it is not growing well and, in turn, not producing the fruit it was planted for. When the soil around the tree is disturbed, the roots are damaged in the digging, and then the tree has to grow new roots, which, in turn, strengthen the tree to bear fruit for the next season.
Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit. The owner says, ‘Well cut it down’, but the man taking care of it says, ‘Leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilise it’.
The tree doesn’t need to be destroyed but disturbed and fed instead.
We are like this tree. We were planted in the kingdom of God by faith in Jesus and given a purpose – to bear fruit. Yet it is easy to drift away from Jesus and begin to follow the way of the world and the way of ourselves. We find it easier to listen to the devil, tempting us with lies in the idea that ‘it is my life and my body; I can do what I like’.
But Jesus has chosen you as his own for his purpose. To bear fruit. The fruit of God’s love in action toward those around you. You are created to be a blessing to others. You are blessed to bless others with God’s love in action.
When the word of the Lord challenges you to live differently, it is like Jesus digging at your roots – the roots in self rather than in the word. You see, the word is the fertiliser of life, and the word of Jesus Christ will feed and sustain you in bearing the fruit of God’s love in action.
When Jesus digs at your roots, hear the word, and be ready for his word to guide, challenge, heal and restore you. Be prepared for his word to nourish your hungry soul, ready to go out into the world with new growth and fruit that blesses others.
Dear Jesus, dig into my roots of selfishness and worldly ways. Let me grow in you to bear fruit for others. Help me to be a blessing to everyone I meet today. Feed me, nourish me, and strengthen me daily in your holy word. Amen.
Pastor Mark lives with his two daughters aged 11 and 8 in Redcliffe, just north of Brisbane. He currently serves as a pastor in the LCANZ and is passionate about sharing Jesus’ love with those around him. Pastor Mark loves to travel with his family to see the wonders of God’s creation and meet people who share their stories of what God has done for them.
The waiting
by Jane Mueller
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I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure (Psalm 40:1,2).
Read Psalm 40:1–11
There’s a kind of waiting that grinds. The kind where you’ve done everything right – prayed, served, persevered – and nothing shifts. Where your faith feels static, and your prayers seem unheard. David knew this waiting. He didn’t downplay it or romanticise it: ‘I waited patiently for the Lord.’ The original Hebrew text can be interpreted as, ‘I waited and waited.’ It’s not serene; it’s survival.
David called his place of despair ‘the desolate pit’. Sometimes, the pit is burnout. Sometimes, it’s depression. Sometimes, it’s the slow suffocation of carrying other people’s expectations while pretending you’re fine. The miry bog clings – fear of failure, resentment that you can’t say aloud, the quiet cynicism that creeps in when God feels absent.
And yet, David doesn’t stay in the mud. He’s pulled out, not because he climbed harder, but because God reached lower. ‘He drew me up … set my feet upon a rock.’ Grace does what striving never could.
Notice that the rescue doesn’t erase the scars. David still remembers the pit. He still names the waiting. Faith doesn’t mean pretending it never happened; it means standing steady while you still smell like the mud you came from.
Here we are in 2026. It’s still early in the year – the time we’re meant to feel renewed, focused and ready. But maybe you already feel spent. Perhaps you’ve hit February-level fatigue in January. If so, you’re right where grace works.
Maybe ‘waiting and waiting’ is your first act of faith this year. Not hustling, not forcing; just holding your ground while God does what only he can – because he still pulls people out of pits, even when the calendar’s shiny and your soul isn’t.
So, if you’re in the thick of it, stop polishing the mud or trying to climb your own way out of the pit. Wait … not because you’ve given up, but because you’ve handed it over. Trust that the waiting isn’t wasted. Give God the truth of it and let him meet you there. Let him lift you again. Let him restore you to solid and steady ground.
In her book, When the Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd writes, ‘When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.’
The pit isn’t the end of the story. It’s where grace starts to write a new one.
God, I’m tired of pretending the pit doesn’t exist. You see the exhaustion, the fear and the ache I’ve stopped naming. Meet me there. Pull me up again. Amen.
Jane is a former Lutheran school principal and now serves as Governance Leadership Director for Lutheran Education SA, NT & WA. Jane has a keen interest in psychology, enjoys hiking and loves learning about and trying new things.
Water + blood + spirit = real faith + real life
by Jane Mueller
Click here to download your printable verse to carry with you today.
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life (1 John 5:12).
Read 1 John 5:6–12
We live in a world that trusts what it can see. If it can’t be proven, posted or peer-reviewed, it’s treated as suspect. But John cuts through the noise: the truest things aren’t always the loudest. God’s truth doesn’t shout through headlines; it quietly moves through the water, the blood and the Spirit.
The water points to Jesus’ baptism – God’s declaration that Christ is his Son.
The blood takes us to the cross – love proven, not promised.
And the Spirit keeps that same love alive – the ongoing proof that what Jesus started hasn’t finished.
These three tell one story: God is alive, real and right here.
It’s easy to let faith become a concept to manage rather than a life to live. We quote it, discuss it, explain it and organise it. But John doesn’t write about faith in a theoretical sense. He brings us back to the pulse of it: whoever has the Son has life. Not doctrine. Not theory. Not a rulebook. Not duty. Life. The kind that breathes, moves and changes things.
So, what does this look like for me on a Friday morning in 2026? It’s courage when fear shouts louder. It’s forgiveness when I’d rather prove my point. It’s integrity when convenience would be easier. It’s the quiet defiance of believing Jesus isn’t just the topic of my prayers, but the oxygen in my lungs.
This passage doesn’t ask us to add more religion to our week or to get busier for God. It asks if Christ’s life is pulsing through ours, shaping how we think, how we love and how we show up. Today’s passage calls us – you and me – to be alive in Christ.
Jesus, you are life itself. Wake me from autopilot. Pull my faith out of theory and into motion. Amen.
Jane is a former Lutheran school principal and now serves as Governance Leadership Director for Lutheran Education SA, NT & WA. Jane has a keen interest in psychology, enjoys hiking and loves learning about and trying new things.
Are you trying to revive what God has released?
by Jane Mueller
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Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).
Read Romans 6:3–11
Some of us are lugging around stories we were never meant to keep alive.
Old habits, old fears, old versions of ourselves – things God has released in Christ. We polish them, defend them, justify them and even call them ‘just how I am’. But resurrection life doesn’t come by dragging the past into the present. It comes by letting the past stay finished.
Paul doesn’t mince words in today’s reading. Baptism is hardly a sentimental symbol. It shows us what God is like – decisive, cleansing and lifegiving. When water is poured over us, it declares that the old ways of living no longer have control. The same God who meets us in that water continues meeting us every day, calling us out of old patterns and into new life.
So why do we keep trying to revive what God has released? Why do we rehearse the same resentments, recycle the same narratives and keep identifying with the same wounds? The perfectionist who can’t stop striving, the leader who keeps replaying old failures, the friend who keeps apologising for taking up space, the parent who still believes they’re not enough? Maybe it’s because the old life is familiar. And sometimes, ‘familiar’ feels safer than ‘free’.
But resurrection doesn’t happen in comfort zones. You can’t keep one foot in the past and one in grace. Paul says, ‘Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.’ That’s an active choice – daily, sometimes hourly.
So maybe it’s time to ask: What’s still taking up oxygen in my soul that should’ve been surrendered by now? What part of me keeps trying to reclaim a life that’s already been transformed?
Stop propping up the old storyline. Step fully into the new one.
Stop trying to become someone new. Start living like the new creation you already are.
And if no-one’s ever spoken this over you, let it land now: the old you is finished. The new you is alive. Walk in it, breathe from it, own it, live it, shine through it.
God of resurrection, expose parts of me still clinging to what you’ve released. Give me the courage to stop rehearsing the things you’ve already finished, and to rise – fully and freely – into the life you’ve given me. Amen.
Jane is a former Lutheran school principal and now serves as Governance Leadership Director for Lutheran Education SA, NT & WA. Jane has a keen interest in psychology, enjoys hiking and loves learning about and trying new things.