The waiting

by Jane Mueller

Click here to download your printable verse to carry with you today.

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

Click here to download your printable verse to carry with you today.

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.