Exploring the questions we ask when we find ourselves trapped between the pain of Good Friday and the miracles of Easter Sunday. With special guest Eritrean gospel singer Helen Berhane.

Please note that this session contains a story about torture in a concentration camp.

Bible passages from the session: Psalm 22

Key points:

–Most of us live our lives somewhere between the cross and the resurrection

–Have faith in the faith of others, even when you don’t have faith of your own

–The paradox of real life is hurt and hope together; praise in spite of the pain

–“… they tried to kill me; I don’t know how I survived. But I always say that the reason I survived is just to be a testimony for others.”- Helen Berhane

Discussion questions:

Q. What did you find most helpful, inspiring or challenging in what Pete Greig, Gemma Hunt and Helen Berhane shared?

Q. Where are you waiting for a breakthrough, a word from God, or an answer to your prayers? What unanswered questions are you carrying today?

Q. In God on Mute, Pete Greig talks about our tendency to “rush the resurrection”; to “leapfrog Holy Saturday”; to tidy up the mess too fast. What is it that makes waiting with unresolved questions such a hard thing to do?

Q. People often say that God’s timing is perfect. Do you agree with this? Why does he sometimes seem so slow?

Q. In God on Mute Pete Greig says that “God’s silence is not his absence but rather his presence in another form”. In what ways have you experienced God’s presence in the midst of silence in the past?

Q. In the midst of your pain and silence, have there been moments where you have been able to say, like Elie Wiesel, “There is God?”

Q. Pete Greig shares about the significance of developing spiritual muscle memory to carry us through the darker and more difficult times of life. What does this mean for you? What ‘holy habits’ have you cultivated – or would you like to cultivate – in your life?

Q. The Bible articulates the reality of life; the pain and hope coming together. Are there any particular Bible passages that have sustained you during times of trial or struggle?

Q. Helen Berhane’s story demonstrates the power of worshipping in the midst of pain and silence. What can we practically do as a group to help one another to fix our eyes on Jesus in the midst of challenges?

Closing prayer:

Holy Saturday calls for trust, patience and a certain defiant hope. We’re going to finish now with a prayer from Alan E. Lewis, one of the few theologians who made it his life’s work to study Holy Saturday:

Hear our prayer for a world still living an Easter Saturday existence, oppressed and lonely, guilty of godlessness and convinced of godforsakenness. Be still tomorrow the God you are today, and yesterday already were: God with us in the grave, but pulling thus the sting of death and promising in your final kingdom an even greater victory of abundant grace and life over the magnitude of sin and death. And for your blessed burial, into which we were baptized, may you be glorified for evermore. Amen.

— taken from God on Mute by Pete Greig, chapter 12