Black Churches: How They Do Suffer and Sing

There is something awesome about the way faith is experienced in many black communities. Their collective experience of being outcast, looked down upon, persecuted and exploited has created a shared experience that parallels Jesus' own.

I love the worship and the passion of many black American churches. They have learned how to suffer and yet sing.

Suffer and Sing.

I feel that that is about all the experience of faith I can know at this time.  My years of studying higher biblical criticism have left me almost bereft of a Bible for comfort.  Even the Resurrection of Christ is torn apart by reasoned study....but the hold of a youthful experience of joy and continued exposure to a church that sings have left me with two anchors, and namely the grace and power of a good worship experience and the face of Christ as seen in people who suffer and yet sing.


So as I continue to seek truth, even the kind that undermines the foundations of faith, I still have the example of the Black church which continues to...........

SUFFER and SING.


I will have to try a little harder to do likewise.

A deeply felt worship experience is a hopeful compensation for the ongoing suffering that is common to all flesh.

And until the suffering and sin that was not 'finished' on the cross is finally finished on earth, this will have to be enough for those who are consigned to

SUFFER and SING.

LH