Hi Sarah B

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Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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Earlier in the year, during a sermon series on God, one week focussed on 'our suffering God' and we explored his own suffering and how he walks with us in our suffering.
I have found the hijacking of Lent making it a time 'to give something up' very unhelpful. I have often found, too, that Christians jump straight from the pain of Good Friday to the joy of Resurrection Sunday without the suspense, pain, anguish, confusion and disappointment of Holy Saturday. As church we seem incapable of spending even a day in a state some people live in for weeks, months or years. What do we have to offer them? 
We must learn not to stick a plaster over our wounds, disappointments and pain. In a fallen world, stuff happens; stuff we would not invite or desire. And God is with us in all of it, but we don't seem to be able to say or acknowledge that. 
Helpful songs for such times might include 'we have sung our songs of victory' and music from the Northumbria Community like 'kyrie eleison' and 'broken I stand'. Maybe it would be good to ask Spring Harvest, New Wine and other big conferences to have at least a 'Lament strand' within their programme, or to really bite the bullet and have a whole conference focussed on the times of sorrow, suffering and mourning, rather than of celebration, cheer and rejoicing?