A Story Worth Sharing: Holy Rocks

Scripture: Genesis 28:10–19

This week at Central, we continued our series A Story Worth Sharing with Jacob’s story in the wilderness. Fleeing from the consequences of his deceit, Jacob finds himself alone, exhausted, and afraid, with nothing but a rock for a pillow. Yet it is in this place — the middle of nowhere, in the middle of his mess — that Jacob dreams of heaven touching earth. God meets him not with condemnation, but with a promise: “I am with you now… I will not leave you.”

Pastor Sarah reflected on how Jacob’s “holy rock” became a marker of God’s presence — a tangible reminder that even in liminal spaces, God shows up. Just as Jacob turned his stone pillow into a sacred pillar, we too are invited to name and mark the moments where heaven has touched earth in our lives. These “holy rocks” become stories worth sharing, reminders of God’s faithfulness not only for ourselves, but for the generations to come.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. When have you felt like God was silent or distant in your life? Looking back, can you see signs that God was still present and at work?
2. Jacob marked his encounter with God by setting up a stone. What might it look like for you to create a reminder of where you’ve seen God in your story?
3. Where in your daily routine do you need to pause, “look up,” and notice God’s presence? How might doing that change the way you see your relationships, struggles, or surroundings?

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A Story Worth Sharing:  From Persecutor to Preacher

 Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:12–17

This week at Central, we continued our series A Story Worth Sharing. Pastor Sarah reflected on Paul’s powerful testimony — a story that begins not with triumph, but with failure. Before he became the great missionary of the early church, Paul (then Saul) was a persecutor of Christians, complicit in violence against the followers of Jesus. Yet rather than hide his past, Paul put it front and center. He called himself “the biggest sinner of all,” not to wallow in shame, but to magnify the endless patience and transforming grace of God.

In a world that prizes highlight reels and carefully curated stories, Paul’s example reminds us that God doesn’t want the edited version of our lives. Grace shines brightest in the broken places, and our most painful chapters can become powerful testimonies of hope. By leading with vulnerability, Paul shows us that no one is beyond God’s reach — and that our stories, even the hardest ones, can open doors for others to encounter mercy and healing.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. What part of your story have you found difficult to share because of shame or fear of judgment? How might sharing these honest parts of your journey open the door for healing and transformation by God’s grace?
2. How can acknowledging our shared experiences of failure and brokenness strengthen our relationships within the church community? In what ways can we create a safe space for one another to tell these whole stories without shame?
3. Paul’s testimony reminds us that no one is beyond the reach of God’s grace. How does knowing that God’s redemption includes the totality of your story influence how you view yourself and your journey with Christ?

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A Story Worth Sharing: The Unknown God Revealed

Scripture: Acts 17:16–34

This week at Central, we began a new worship series, A Story Worth Sharing. Pastor Sarah reflected on Paul’s visit to Athens, where the city was filled with shrines, altars, and philosophies — including one altar marked “to an unknown god.” Rather than debate or condemn, Paul began with the Athenians’ spiritual hunger. He connected their searching to the God already at work in their lives, the God revealed fully in Jesus Christ.

This is the Methodist story of prevenient grace: God’s love goes before us, stirring in our lives even before we recognize it. Like the Athenians, we may have “altars to an unknown god” — seasons or moments when we longed for something more but didn’t yet have the words or story to name it. Paul shows us that evangelism isn’t argument but invitation, telling the story of God’s grace in a way that meets people where they are.

Each of us has a story worth sharing — a story that reveals God’s presence and love in our lives. By telling those stories, we offer others not debate, but light.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

• When you look back at your life, where do you recognize God was already at work in your story before you fully knew it? What were some of your own “altars to an unknown god”?
• When you think about the people in your life who don’t share your faith, what are they already seeking or longing for? How do you see God at work in those desires?

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Singing Our Faith: Go Down, CUMC

 Scripture: Exodus 5:1–6:8 (CEB)

This week in our Singing Our Faith worship series, Central UMC welcomed guest preacher Rev. Lemuel Pearsall, Jr. to reflect on the story of Moses, Pharaoh, and God’s unshakable promises. Standing before Pharaoh, Moses demanded freedom for God’s people, only to see their burdens grow heavier — bricks without straw, beatings without mercy, despair without relief. Pharaoh’s arrogance, the Israelites’ frustration, and even Moses’ own doubt all reveal how unbelief takes root in the face of suffering.

Yet God’s response is steadfast: I will bring you out. I will deliver you. I will redeem you. I will take you as my people. I will be your God. Seven promises of covenant love, each later fulfilled in Christ. Rev. Pearsall reminded us that faith is not the absence of questions, but where we bring them. Like Moses, we are invited to groan in the right direction — to lay our pain, doubt, and longing before God, who is faithful even when we are not.

The legacy of the spiritual “Go Down, Moses” echoes this truth: God stands with the oppressed, delivers the enslaved, and calls us to confront the Pharaohs of our own time. Our hope is not in our strength, but in the God who has already said yes and amen through Christ Jesus.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. How does the legacy of the Spiritual “Go Down Moses” deepen our understanding of God’s solidarity with the oppressed?
2. What does it mean for us, like Moses, to confront the “Pharaohs” in our lives and communities today?

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Singing Our Faith: Tambourine Theology

Scripture: Exodus 15:1–21 (CEB)

This week at Central UMC, Rev. Sarah Harrison-McQueen invited us to stand on the shores of the Red Sea with the Israelites, who had just witnessed the impossible. Behind them, the waters closed over Pharaoh’s army. Ahead of them stretched wilderness, uncertainty, and freedom. In that liminal moment, the first sound was not a command or a quiet prayer, but music — tambourines and dancing led by Miriam the prophet.

Rev. Harrison-McQueen reminded us that throughout history, music has been the language of liberation. From the songs of enslaved Africans in America to the freedom anthems of the Civil Rights Movement, from the rubble of the Berlin Wall to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, rhythm and song have always carried the power to resist oppression and proclaim hope.

Miriam’s tambourine teaches us that celebration is not frivolous — it is prophetic. Her embodied praise declared that oppression did not have the final word and that God’s deliverance was real. Even in the wilderness, the people carried tambourines because they expected to celebrate. This is tambourine theology: a faith that insists on joy, even before the full story of freedom has been written.

We are invited to live this same way today. Our worship can be resistance, our joy can be a witness, and our embodied praise can become a proclamation that God is still making a way where there seems to be none.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. When has God helped you through something that felt really hard or impossible?
2. How can your praise become an act of witness or resistance?
3. What “tambourines” — symbols of joy or hope — are you carrying with you on your journey of faith?

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Singing Our Faith: The Best Is Yet to Come

Scripture: Isaiah 43:15–21 (CEB)

This week at Central UMC, we welcomed guest preacher Rev. Michelle Holmes Chaney, Director for Leadership and Church Vitality for the Northern Virginia District. Rev. Holmes Chaney reminded us that even in the midst of uncertainty and reflection, God is constantly doing something new—sprouting, emerging, and unfolding in our lives and in the world around us.

Through personal stories, memories, and even a Frank Sinatra song, she showed how hope can emerge in both the ordinary and the extraordinary. Like seeds that inevitably sprout when nurtured, God’s new things are always at work, even if we cannot yet see the full bloom.

Rev. Holmes Chaney encouraged us to pay attention to God’s perpetual “now”—a present that is always imminent and filled with possibility. Through trust, faith, and expectation, we are invited to perceive God’s transformative work in our lives, in the church, and in the world. The refrain is simple yet profound: The best is yet to come, and the sun has yet to shine its brightest.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. Where in your life, or in the life of the church, do you sense God inviting you to let go of the past in order to make room for something new?
2. What helps you remain hopeful when the future feels uncertain or delayed?
3. What is one thing you can do this week to actively cultivate hope, either in your own life or in someone else’s?

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Singing Our Faith: Directions for Singing

This week at Central UMC, we welcomed guest preacher Brian Lamb from Wrights Chapel UMC in Ladysmith, VA. A seminary-educated public high school business teacher pursuing ordination, Brian brings a unique vision for ministry in the public schools — serving God and students where faith and daily life meet.

Drawing from John Wesley’s timeless “Directions for Singing,” Brian invited us to see worship music not as a battleground between “traditional” and “contemporary,” but as a living expression of God’s renewing work. Just as the psalmist turned the old story of the Exodus into a new song, God continues to make all things new — even in our music.

Through personal stories of worship transitions, seasons of spiritual dryness, and moments when God’s presence broke through in unexpected ways, Brian reminded us that styles may change, but God’s love remains constant. The question is not whether we prefer the organ or the guitar, the hymn or the praise chorus, but whether we are open to God breaking down the barriers — in music and in life — that keep us from deeper communion with Him.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

• What barriers keep you from fully connecting with God?
• How has God refreshed your faith during dry or difficult seasons?
• How can we invite others into a relationship with God in ways that are relevant to their lives?

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Singing Our Faith: Ubi Caritas Deus Ibi Est

Scripture: Psalm 107:1–7, 33–43 (UMH 830)

This week at Central UMC, we welcomed guest preacher Rev. Joanna Dietz, a deacon who ministers in the community—often at farmer's markets and public gatherings—where she makes visible the steadfast love of God.

Rev. Joanna invited us to reflect on Psalm 107, a rich song of thanksgiving and reversal: deserts become springs, the lowly are lifted up, and the weary are led to a place to dwell. Through the lens of monastic life—from the chants of the Benedictines to the humble service of the Franciscans—we explored the tension and balance between personal holiness and social holiness.

We learned how the early monks not only memorized all 150 psalms through chant but also lived out their faith through daily labor, hospitality, and care for the poor. Their monasteries became oases in the wilderness—places of song, prayer, and service.

Rev. Joanna reminded us that in today’s world of doomscrolling, division, and despair, we are still called to create oases of community and compassion. Like the psalmists, we name the desert places—loneliness, hunger, injustice—and trust in God’s transforming love to bring about healing and abundance. Each of us is invited to consider the places we’re called to act, speak out, and stand in solidarity with those on the margins.

This is the rhythm of grace: worship and justice, prayer and protest, solitude and service. The question is not just How is it with your soul? but also How is it with your neighbor?

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. Are you spending time in scripture and prayer with God and allowing your heart to be transformed to see the world through God’s eyes?
2. How is God calling you to action in response to the fear and scarcity mentality with love, grace, and abundance?
3. How can you live your life balanced by personal holiness with social holiness as you seek solidarity with those who need one with privilege to speak to those in power against injustice?

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Singing Our Faith: The Still Center

 Scripture: 1 Kings 19:8–16

This week at Central UMC, we turned to the story of the prophet Elijah—a man who stood against injustice, called down fire from heaven, and then found himself hiding in a cave, burnt out and afraid. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah flees to Mount Horeb, the same sacred ground where Moses once met God, and there, in the quiet, he encounters the divine—not in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the sound of sheer silence.

Pastor Sarah led us through a powerful reflection on the "still center"—a space of sincere, grounded faith in a noisy and chaotic world. Drawing inspiration from The Swan, a serene musical interlude tucked inside a satirical symphony, we explored how God calls us not to match the noise of the world but to embody grace and stillness within it.

In a time of performative religion, relentless news cycles, and spiritual fatigue, we were reminded that God's voice often comes not in spectacle, but in silence. Elijah’s story reminds us that we’re not alone, that faith is passed from generation to generation, and that God is still speaking—quietly, but powerfully.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

1. How do you feel God’s presence in small or quiet moments?
2. Where in your life are you experiencing noise right now?
3. How might you create space this week to listen for the still, small voice of God?

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🎶 Faith That Sings: Songs of Heaven and Resistance

 Scripture: Hebrews 11:1–16

This week at Central UMC, we turned to the stirring words of Hebrews 11—a chapter sometimes called the “Hall of Faith”—to reflect on the kind of belief that doesn’t just survive adversity but sings through it. Through the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Noah, and others, we were reminded that faith is not wishful thinking—it is confident assurance. It's the ability to live as if God’s promises are already true.

Pastor Sarah guided us through a powerful reflection on how faith has always found expression in song—especially in traditions like Southern Gospel, where music born from suffering becomes a vision of resistance. We explored how singing about heaven is not an escape from reality but a prophetic protest against the brokenness of the world. From enslaved people lifting their voices in hope to revival tents filled with trembling hearts and triumphant songs, we are part of a great chorus that believes heaven is coming—and is already breaking in.

As part of our Singing Our Faith series, this service invites us to sing not just for joy, but for justice. To let our music proclaim a better world, even when we cannot yet see it.

🌀 Reflection Questions:

• What does it mean to have a faith that not only endures suffering but also resists it?
• How might our church reflect a heaven-rooted hope that works for justice in the present?

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