Reflections on the Holy Spirit - Pentecost Sunday

 What does the Holy Spirit look like in everyday life? In our latest podcast, our pastors — Rev. David Freeman, Rev. Haley Jones, Rev. Brittany Watson, and Rev. Heather Rose — each share a unique reflection on the Holy Spirit and how it moves in our lives, our church, and our community. Their perspectives are different, thoughtful, and deeply grounded in faith — offering something meaningful for everyone listening. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

My friend Ricky came into my life through the community cafe here at First Church. And the cafe has become one of those places where people drift in carrying these whole histories, but we only get a small portion of the full story. And at first, Ricky became just another familiar face. Another cup of coffee, another nap taker in the middle of the day, another man just trying to make it through the week. And my friendship didn't arrive with Ricky all at once. It kind of gathered slowly as he came back to the cafe time and time again. It was in conversations that were half finished, small favors, checking whether he ate recently, listening to him call his mother every single day that he was in the cafe. Asking how paperwork was going. And over time this concern became joint responsibility. And that responsibility for one another became love. Ricky was struggling. Systems meant to help people, Medicaid, Snap, forms, appointments, waiting lists, phone calls that were never returned, became these mountains that he was ready to turn back from. We tried to stabilize things. We couldn't solve everything. I don't believe that that is our role in the community cafe to solve other people's problems. But we just wanted to keep Ricky from disappearing. Some days that meant filling out applications. Some days it meant making calls. Some days it meant simply not letting him disappear and celebrating those couple of times when he came back after months and months away. The Holy Spirit is often imagined as wind or fire. But scripture also speaks of the Spirit as comforter, advocate, helper. And I've been wondering whether the Spirit sometimes appears as persistence. One person refusing to abandon another. Then came the ice storm of 2025. Center Street became quiet. The roads were starting to freeze. We were all headed to cozy up in our own homes. And I found Ricky in the doorway of the old horns, half on old Amazon boxes, with one shoe on his foot. Half dead. And I don't know exactly where the Holy Spirit was in that moment, but if the Holy Spirit is persistence, persistence in not abandoning one another, maybe it was in that alarm that said, go over there. Go check. Go see who it is. Maybe it was in this refusal to walk past. Maybe the spirit was in hands helping one another to survive. Maybe in the stubborn truth that a person's life still matters when the world has stopped paying attention. Ricky lived barely. He lost a leg and a lot of dignity over those last few months. He's still repairing. But he's now in a nursing home. That sentence itself carries its own grief because nursing homes often arrive after losses, health, independence, certainty. Ricky kind of feels like his world became smaller, not necessarily more stable. But friendship does not end when someone enters another stage of life. The Holy Spirit, if it is truly comforter, may dwell in consistency, in remembering people when society files them away. In visiting, in speaking their names, in honoring who they have been beyond their illness or their homelessness. When I think of Ricky, I don't think of first first of forms of Medicaid or Snap, though those mattered. I don't think first of the ICE or even the emergency 911 phone call. I think of a friendship that taught me something hard and difficult. Love is rarely dramatic when it's happening. Love often looks like paperwork. Love looks like phone calls, checking in, searching during storms, showing up in hospital rooms, driving across town, buying someone's favorite ice cream, sitting quietly in nursing homes. And maybe the Holy Spirit has always moved like that. Not just in beautiful sanctuaries, but between ordinary people. Ordinary people carrying one another through the storm. The Holy Spirit as the nudge of persistence. A love that refuses to give up. Thank you, God, for that good, good gift. Amen.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

I grew up in a small United Methodist church, and I don't remember us talking about the Holy Spirit very much. And on Pentecost Sunday, when I would hear that scripture, sounded scary and really sounds like a blockbuster movie. But every Sunday we would sing a song, Gloria Patra, and that was the Holy Ghost, which again, good, bad, scary, I wasn't really sure what to think about it. And as I've grown older and in ministry, I have often described the Holy Spirit as glitter. Something that you might not see every day, but you all have strong opinions about it. Right? You're either yes, glitter, you're never glitter, or you're maybe like glitter for others, as long as it doesn't touch me. Well, I don't think it's a surprise. You've known me for almost a year. You can guess I am team. Glitter is great. And I've raised two young adults to believe that glitter should always be played with. Glitter is something that's good. Last Saturday, my daughter graduated college here at UALR. She's an art major. So as she was preparing for her graduation, she was making a custom graduation stole and decorating her cap and gown hat. And she was also babysitting and house setting for my friend and her dogs. So she was doing all that at her house. She was sending me pictures throughout the update as she was making it to show me her progress. And she had this beautiful stole with flowers on it, and you can guess the edges had glitter so they would sparkle. And she had her hat and she had made this beautiful iris that's kind of her trademark and her art. And it said UALR 2026, and it was all done in glitter, and it was beautiful. So I sent one of her pictures to our friend, and she called me and loudly proclaimed, Do you know there's glitter on my table? I was like, but didn't you see the pretty things? And there wasn't just glitter all over her table. The glitter was in containers and it was neatly glued on Aubrey's things. And I had forgot that my friend detested glitter. Doesn't have a lot of it in her house and doesn't invite friends in who play with it. And she said, Heather, there better not be any glitter left in the grooves of my kitchen table. Yes, ma'am. And I thought, well, we won't be best friends for much longer. I let my daughter know you have to clean that table good. And I read that, there's just not even any glitter on the table, it'll be fine. And the week proceeded, and uh, we are still friends. My daughter graduated. All the things were great. And as much as I love glitter, I forget that others just don't. Because glitter truly is the gift that keeps on giving. And giving and giving and giving. You share it with others everywhere you go. And that's actually what I like about it. I like that it's a little messy. I like that months later somebody will say, Oh, you've got glitter on your face. And I'm like, oh, I haven't even planned playing with it. And it's just a little messy. In ministry and in most of our lives, we like the opposite of that. We like clean, we like orderly, and we really like control. And glitter is something that is not easily controlled or contained. Now, I do love intentional worship, I love worship planning, I think our ministry should be planned. And I love on Sunday mornings from start to finish. I love that intentional worship from the first prayer, the prelude to the benediction and the postlude. Everything just goes together in this sacred moment. And it's almost like the reality is suspended. And that moment on Sunday, we're just here in this sacred place. You can imagine the anxiety in my body and my first appointment. I get up to preach like I did every Sunday and had prayed and looked down. It wasn't the first page of my sermon. And I learned it's important to number your pages if you have more than one in that moment. And I had about a half a millisecond to decide: do I disrupt this flow of worship and say, hold on, let me get all my pages together. Or do I just go with the flow? And I heard a whisper in my ear say, We walk by faith, not by sight. Which was the actual scripture I was preaching that day. So in that moment I said, okay, God, we're gonna walk by faith. And it was a transm transformative moment for me because I learned to have a little more trust in my call, a little more faith in my God, and I had a better understanding of the Holy Spirit as a partnership. That often when I'm trying to control every little detail, I wasn't leaving room for the Holy Spirit. So at its best, the Holy Spirit is a partnership. So from that day forward, I've tried to trust that if I show up, prepare to participate, the Holy Spirit will show up as well. And I think sometimes we need to remember that it's okay when ministry is just a little bit messy. Well, glitter did happen at my friend's house, and she did tell me this week that she found a big pile of blue glitter under her trash can. And I said, Well, Aubrey did tell me that there was a lot of blue in the trash can and on the trash can and outside, but there was none, none on your table. And she said, You're right, there wasn't any on my table. And she told me just a few days ago, she'll be walking down the hall and she thinks there's a drop of water, and she'll bend down to get it, and she'll realize it's just the light catch over a little Aubrey sparkle. And so every day she's been reminded of that glitter and of Aubrey. Well, my friend is packing to move two hours away to her next appointment that starts in July. And I love that as she's unpacking her boxes, she's gonna see a little Aubrey sparkle. She's gonna take a little piece of that love and she'll just remember that moment. The Holy Spirit, as a divine sparkle that leaves a radiant trail around me and in our world is one that draws me in. And on days that I feel depleted, stretched too thin, completely out of my element, I like the image of a glow that I can't see, but it's there within me, offering a glimmer of the goodness of God. Powerful, beautiful, and nothing can contain it. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

I love anytime we get to talk about the Holy Spirit, and I especially am excited today because I get to share with you all the story of a little mini Pentecost that I experienced when I was searching for seminaries, actually. And for you to understand the fullness of the story, I'm gonna go back just a little bit. I began to feel a call into ministry when I was in my junior high years. I was 13, 14 years old, and I had big plans for myself. I was gonna be a famous actress, obviously, or a lawyer like my grandfather. Uh, but for some reason I kept feeling this intense call every time I entered the church building, which was constantly in my early years, that that was the place I belonged, not just on Sunday mornings, not just on Wednesday nights, but vocationally. And the Holy Spirit began to shift who I was and began to shift my understanding of where I was called to be. And in a typical Brittany fashion, I said, got it, deal. I'll take it from here, Holy Spirit. You can sit down now, right? I've got it from here. I can control this, I can plan this out point by point. And I really tried. I really tried to take full control of that call into ministry, of that call into the life of the church. But I had no idea what I was doing, no clue on how that was going to manifest. And actually, it was the people around me, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that began to guide me. Kay Hoover, which was a longtime member here at First Church and a children's minister and the director of the CDC across the street, she knew I was called long before even I did. And so when I was in my college years, she invited me to come here to First United Methodist Church to be an intern with kids and youth. And I did, I did, and I loved it. I worked with her, who was just an incredible friend and mentor. I worked with Clay Bumpers, who was the kindest man who never spoke. And I loved my time here. But something happened in my second summer when I began to continue to really discover that call into ministry. It was Ashton, Jason Molliter, called me into his office one day and he said, Hey, like come and tell me a little bit more about what you're gonna do after college. Jason was the associate pastor here, and I was excited to tell him, which is something he should have already known, I was gonna be a pastor like him. Be a pastor, Jason, and he said, Awesome, like how's that candidacy process going? The candidacy process is actually how you become a pastor in the United Methodist Church. And my answer to him was, what is the candidacy process? No idea. All of that control, all of those plans, and I think I had just decided I was gonna show up to a church someday and they were gonna invite me to be their pastor. Anyway, through the Holy Spirit, Jason began to shift and to change, just as that initial calling changed me from, you know, winning an Oscar someday to my place right here. Jason began to shift my calling and understanding of how the world worked and to understanding that my call was not just between me and God, it was a calling between me and y'all and the church. So appreciative of that conversation. So appreciative of that change that truly shifted who I was. Now, that was the background that gets me to our little mini Pentecost because I knew that I was called. I began the candidacy process to explore that calling, and then I had to figure out where I was going to seminary. But the thing is, I already knew. I was gonna go to Duke Divinity School. Uh that's where all the cool pastors went, that's where Britt Scarda, the pastor who I knew when I was growing up, that's where he went. I was gonna go to Duke, just like them. And I did, I applied, I got a little scholarship, I had everything ready. I bought a sweatshirt. It said Duke. And then uh one day I got a little curious about another seminary. I was attending college just north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois, and there was a seminary at Northwestern University just down the train from me, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, and I I wondered, I wonder what that seminary is like. I mean, it's not nearly as good as Duke, we all know that, but I'm gonna go check it out just in case. So I went and I signed up for a visitor's day, and I took the train down uh south one afternoon, and I went to conversation groups and and I got to meet some of the professors. And then we were all invited to join the community for worship. And we were worshiping, and it was beautiful, and it was sweet, and it was thoughtful, and I really liked it. But then the person who was leading worship led us in a time of prayer and then invited everybody to say the Lord's Prayer in the language that was closest to their own heart. And so instead of a communal act of everybody saying the Lord's Prayer in the same cadence at the same time, all of a sudden the entire chapel erupted in voices, and there were murmurings of the Lord's Prayer in all different languages. There was there was English and and Korean and Spanish and French and different languages that dotted the continent of Africa. It was incredible. It was literally life-changing because in that moment I felt the Holy Spirit blowing. I heard the Holy Spirit speaking, and I knew that I was called to that space. To that place. That is where I ended up. Seminary. Again, this shift in who I was, the shift of who I was called to be. All of that, I think, prepared me for a life of ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church, a place where we are constantly shifting, constantly changing, constantly being pushed and pulled into new spaces led by the Holy Spirit. And as you all know, I'm being pushed and pulled now into a new space of my own ministry as I get ready to leave this space and move into ministry at Pinnacle View United Methodist Church. But I know, I know that the Spirit is with me because the Spirit has been with me all the way to this point. And I know the Spirit is with you. Because the Spirit has been with you all all the way to this point. And so that, my friends, is the story of my tiny Pentecost and the way that it shifted me not just for a moment, but for a lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

As we've heard, sometimes the Holy Spirit is overwhelming and obvious. And sometimes the Spirit is subtle and sneaky. One day, several years ago, when I was serving another church, I needed to run to the grocery store to grab a loaf of bread. That was it, just one item. And in this particular store, when you walk in the front door, the bakery section is to the left. And I was in a hurry, and my mind was on a million other things, so as I walked in, I absent-mindedly turned to the right, heading in the complete wrong direction. And I made it almost to the far side of the store before my brain caught up with my body and I realized my mistake. But instead of doing an about face and redirecting, I just kept going and then turned down an aisle which led me to the back of the store. And when I realized this, I started to laugh to myself, realizing how unefficient this was, and I thought, I am going to make an entire circle around this grocery store by the end. But about that time I caught out of the corner of my eye a man from my church who I hadn't seen in quite a while. I was in a hurry, and I knew I but I knew I needed to stop and speak to him to say hello, so I did. And when he saw me, he looked at me almost relieved. Like he had been carrying something heavy, and somebody picked up the other end. I said, I hadn't seen you in a while, and he said, I know it's been a rough few months. I knew his wife had had an autoimmune disease that dominated their lives, and they had to take things one day at a time, depending on how she felt. But he told me of how her symptoms had intensified and she had been seeing several specialists, and one of his daughters was also having some concerning medical issues. He shared about how it was difficult to manage all of this while caring for his other children and his demanding career. As he talked, the urgency of my errand faded, and staying present with him became the priority. We stood there talking in the aisle for 30 minutes. I didn't say much. I didn't have much to offer but just to listen and be present. I could care I could I could realize that he had been carrying all of this alone. And so I told him how our our church would be there for them, that we would start a meal train, or we would pick his kids up from school, or we would certainly be praying for him. We shared this holy moment standing there among the potato chips and processed cheeses. It was one of those experiences that reminded me how crucial a church community is in life. And we said our goodbyes, and it took me a second to remember why I was there, and this time I took a more direct path to the bakery, got my bread, and checked out and made my way out to the car. And as I did, I started to realize that if I had gone the right way, I would have missed it. If I had even turned my head in a different direction, I might not have seen him standing there. And I thought, wow, what a weird coincidence. When I got to my car, I started the engine and I thought, a new thought. I think not. Was it just absent-mindedness that made me go in the wrong direction? Or was it a fortuitous accident that I ran into this man? I think not. I think. I believe, I know it was the subtle and stealthy Holy Spirit guiding, disrupting, and connecting our hearts. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.