Follow up to our Lent Course - Session 3 - dealing with joy, frustration and disappointment

On this page, we have some items to help you catch up with the last session of the Lent Course and some additional material to help you go deeper.

What we covered on the night

Feel free to watch Sheila’s intro to the evening and the content of her talk.

Content of our discussions on the night

In breakout rooms, those present at the session considered the slides shown above and discussed their own views and experiences of disappointment, even within the Christian life: 

The notes accompanying the first slide infer that the larger the spread between expectation and reality the more the disappointment. 

The second slide compares two life journeys – one perhaps preferred, as it is much easier to travel on even ground– but undoubtedly less eventful. 
And the other, possibly more realistic with its difficult terrain, its ups and downs but also offering the chance of some spectacular highs to compensate for the lows. 

Discussion on these slides on Tuesday produced thoughtful and interesting responses: Here are some:

·      The consensus about the equation was that it was helpful, but not totally encompassing.

·      People agreed that it is important to have realistic expectations – to guard against disappointment arising from expecting over much.

·       But having constantly low expectations is equally misguided – it destroys motivation and diminishes joy. We need to get a balance.

·      One person said, “God always provides despite me. Thankfully, God’s purposes are always played out in the end, despite what I might try to engineer.

·      Another commented that the current Covid crisis has presented us with a completely unexpected reality - we could not have anticipated its coming or its extent, which has made it so hard. Covid has led to many disappointments!