mgpcpastor's blog

Some things can’t be overcome or recovered from.
Which runs counter to the preferred narrative of a victorious Christian life, or even the more general desire that a situation is returning to normal.
There are situations that are never overcome; events from which we never recover.
Instead the best outcome is that our lives incorporate whatever that reality is as we go on.
There’s nothing to do. There will be no change. So we cope.
And in some situations that’s all there is.
It may look like we’ve won or recovered; and that is the narrative that the world would prefer for its own sense of comfort and alleviated awkwardness, but, in reality, it’s coping.

And I know now about helplessness – of what to do when there is nothing to do. I have learned coping. We live in a time and place where, over and over, when confronted with something unpleasant we pursue not coping but overcoming. Often we succeed. Most of humanity has not enjoyed and does not enjoy such luxury. Death shatters our illusion that we can make do without coping.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son, Spire 1989, pg. 72