Vanessa Maleare leads us through a study of magical objects, Moses’s staff, and the movement from destruction to provision. In Exodus, the same staff once used to turn the Nile to blood becomes a tool for bringing life-giving water from the rock. What might this transformation teach us about redemption—and how might we discern our own place in bringing real, good change to the situations around us? [Exodus 17:1-7]

Reflection Questions

1. Has your freedom come at the cost of something else?

2. What is something in your life that perhaps once was used to bring destruction and has been redeemed for a more life-giving use?

3. Do you feel comfortable "putting God to the test?

1. What has been entrusted to my care?
2. Where am I holding on too tightly?
3. What from my past can I receive with gratitude, and what am I still learning to release?

Eric Robinson notices that many of us have suffered heartbreak in our journey with God and the church, and asks how might this be an invitation to open us to living in a new reality?

Reflection Questions:

1. When are the times your heart has been broken in your faith journey? 2. Where do you see your life resonating with the story of Joseph? 3. How might God be inviting you to allow your heart to be broken open?

Lilly Ettinger explores Jonah alongside the prophetic tradition of bringing anger, disappointment, and protest directly to God. What if complaint isn’t a failure of faith, but part of a faithful relationship with God? Lilly considers how making room for honest complaint might expand our understanding of justice, restoration, and God’s surprising mercy. [Jonah 3:10-4:11]

Reflection Questions

1. Where am I waiting for judgment instead of hoping for restoration? 2. Where has God been gracious to me in my discomfort? 3. Where might my idea of justice be smaller than God’s mercy?

Catherine Johnson reframes Jesus’ invitation to “lose your life” not as self-erasure, but as a release from the survival strategies we cling to for safety. Jesus models another way: to live from our deepest values even in the presence of fear and loss—to love what is mortal, hold it fully, and, when the time comes, let it go.

Reflection Questions

1. What survival strategy has helped protect you in the past but may no longer be serving you in the present?
2. Where in your life are fear or self-preservation tempting you to act against what you most deeply value?
3. What might it mean for you right now to practice the movement of loving, holding, and letting go?

Lynn Osgood walks us through Luke’s story of the road to Emmaus where the risen Christ is present long before the disciples recognize him. This sermon opens a new series, God in Ordinary Places, by asking what might change if we looked at the world around us in the same way: not as places where we bring God, but as places where God is already at work.

Reflections Questions:

1. Where in your ordinary routines are you most likely to overlook the presence of God? 2. We often imagine spiritual life as directing our attention away from everyday things toward something “higher.” What might change if we instead encountered God through the world around us? 3. In what places do you feel closer to God? What makes those places the particular places they are?

With a new school year and new expectations approaching this fall, Lilly Ettinger notices that it can be easy to feel overwhelmed and on our own. God reminds us that we are not isolated human beings, but part of a community that helps us not to conform to hyperindividualism, but to lean into being a part of the story of God and the world.

Reflection Questions

1. Where in your life are you acting as though you have to do it alone?
2. What becomes possible when we understand ourselves as members of one another?
3. Where might God be inviting you to create the community you also need?

Tags: Spiritual Growth, Progressive Church, Community, Transformation

Vanessa Maleare Interviews Dr. Lynn Osgood, Vox’s new Scholar in Residence, as she explores our sense of calling through the theology of placemaking, asking how the physical places we inhabit shape us, and how our calling shapes those places in return.

Reflection Questions

1. When in your life have you felt a call?
2. What did that call feel like in your body?
3. What difference did you witness between the call you felt and how it lived out in the world?