The unresolved.

I don’t have a bow that I can tie and place nicely on top of my story: it doesn’t resolve. I still to this day have to reconcile with a regular inner pain.

I’ve recently been grappling with the difficult question; what if it doesn’t resolve on this earth? It’s left me with many more questions and at times a sense of great absence from God. The ‘unfixables’ keep us sleepless and often test our exhausted hope.

You see suffering is always looming around our lives, nipping at our heels and wrestling us to the ground — and well, some of us never get back up. And for the others, well they walk around with a limp. Suffering tends to be the place where we look hardest for God, and at times it even tends to be the place where he is most difficult to be found.

Surely it wasn’t suppose to be this way? I ask myself often. But then I remember my least favourite promise God gave us; “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). Hardship is to be expected, and when it cannot be cured, it must be endured.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” -Viktor Frankl (Man’s search for Meaning)

I think about this quote all the time. Unanswered prayers and undesired circumstances give us the occasion to ask God what deeper change he wants within us.

I must admit, I struggle when we have a church that celebrates those on the mountain tops. We struggle to lament, wait and to tell the stories that are unresolved.

The Wests deficiencies in its teaching on suffering are evident. Tyler Staton makes the point that we know more about how to praise Jesus of the powerful resurrection, then we do to weep with the Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.

Surely this will have dire consequences? I think many may walk away from faith being disillusioned and disappointed — because the faith that seemed so powerful at the summit will seem flimsy and fragile down here in the valley.

I do, however, think powerfully the unresolved invites us into a space with Jesus that is not reliant on comfort but instead communion — to drink from a cup that is both bitter and sweet. A constant tension.

So for those sitting with the unresolved, I’ve learned the deeper our brokenness and suffering we go, the deeper Christ’s solidarity with us. As we drown in the pain and despair — we are descending ever deeper into Christ’s very heart — not away from it.