Grace, we have said, is overcoming. Not undoing. Not effacing. Not regretful, but overcoming. There is something scandalous about the way God takes up this contingency in our lives—all of it, even the heartbreak and sorrow, the evil and injustice—and forges it into this singular life that is mine, that is me.22 It is this me, the fruit of zigs and zags, stitches and scars, who is then renewed, empowered, called. I am the only one I could be. None of this justifies or excuses the heartbreak. To be human is to be the product of a history that should have been otherwise: that’s what it means to
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