Following or Reflecting?

When Jesus says, “Follow me,” I wonder if the invitation is deeper than we sometimes imagine.

Following can sound like trying hard to keep up, placing our feet where Jesus once walked. But Jesus also speaks of abiding, remaining, dwelling in Divine love.

Perhaps the deepest form of following is reflection.

A mirror does not strive to become the sun. It simply turns toward the light and reflects what it receives.

Maybe the Christian life is less about trying to imitate Jesus and more about living so close to Christ that Christ’s life naturally shines through us.

A tree follows the sun not by chasing it across the sky, but by orienting itself toward the light. As it does, it becomes radiant with that light.

Perhaps we do not follow in order to become beloved. We follow because we are already beloved.

Maybe following is what reflection looks like in motion.

The One Who Sees Me (reflection)

Belovedness begins before we can return it.

Before there is love received, there is a gaze.

One of the most tender moments in Scripture belongs to Hagar. An Egyptian. A slave. Pregnant, used, and cast out. She flees into the wilderness carrying her pain and uncertainty. She is the least visible person in the story.

Yet it is Hagar who first gives God a name.

She names God El Roi, "the God who sees me."

The God of the overlooked is named by the overlooked.

When I reflect on my own wilderness journey, I am reminded of what being unseen does to us. The body tightens. The breath becomes shallow. We brace ourselves against rejection or abandonment. The unseen struggle to exhale.

But then comes the gaze. A gaze that knows our name, our story, and our wounds, and does not turn away.

Something softens. The breath drops. It becomes safe to be here. Safe to be ourselves. Safe to be seen and still wanted.

Perhaps belovedness begins here. Not with striving or understanding, but with discovering that before we ever looked for God, God was already looking at us with love.

The first gift is not love.

The first gift is being seen.

John 4:10–14 (reflection)

Jesus answered her,“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered,“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

When Jesus speaks of the water he gives, the Greek is unusually alive. John does not use the word for a dug well, the kind you return to again and again with your bucket, hoping there is still something there.

He uses a different word with a different meaning.

πηγή (pēgē) A spring.A source.An artesian well.

ἁλλομένου (hallomenou) Leaping.Springing.Bursting up.

Water that rises.

This is not still water. It is not managed water. It is not water we must keep extracting.

This is why spring, source, and artesian wells feel so faithful.

An artesian well flows because something deep is under pressure.Hidden water rises of its own accord. It breaks upward because it cannot remain buried.

Jesus is not offering us better thirst management. He is awakening a living source within us. A spring of resurrection life, moving with joy, shaping a whole life into the life of the ages.

As followers of Jesus, we learn to live from this rising water. We discover that our calling is not only to drink, but to accompany others until they, too, hear the sound of the Heartstream breaking through their own dry ground.

Even now. Even here.