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SOUTHBOROUGH L’ABRI PRAYER/NEWSLETTER,
Winter, 2008
49 Lynbrook Road, Southborough, MA 01772

I have sometimes read a chapter from C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity to our students and it has always provoked good discussion. I thought I would start the new year by letting you into a piece of the discussion. Lewis started with the predictably negative response that many people have to Jesus’ teaching, “Be perfect…”. They think Jesus was saying that we must achieve perfection for him to be willing to help us. Since perfection is such a ridiculous impossibility, he must be mocking us. Lewis disagreed. He thought Jesus meant, “The only help I will give is help to become perfect. You may want something less: but I will give you nothing less.”

The difference is enormous. On the one hand, we have a divine demand which would lead us into cynicism, neurotic legalism, sentimental self-righteous fantasy or some combination of those nightmares. On the other hand, it is an amazing promise of where God intends to take us if we follow Jesus. The final destination is to make us like Jesus in the presence of the Father. We are justified as we believe, but God loves us too much to leave us there and plans to transform us. He is Lord, so this journey will be under his direction, not ours. I remember a flight attendant’s announcement to us as we were buckling our seat belts on our way to a L’Abri conference. She said, “This plane is going to Charlotte, North Carolina. If you do not want to go to Charlotte, this is a real good time to de-plane.” That was where the plane was going. We were not pilot, co-pilot or navigator. If we had wanted to go to a different place, we needed to find a different plane. If we lose sight of our final destination and of God’s serious intention to move us toward it in this life, we may not be prepared for the rough ride.

We get into trouble if our intention is to grow only enough to be nicer or more respectable people, less addicted to our uncomfortable addictions and better able to gain the approval of society around us. If we think we have achieved this, we might conclude, “O.K., that’s enough. I have grown enough to get rid of the sharp edges, so things will run smoothly as they are from now on.” But God’s plans for us are much more radical than this. He has scarcely begun his work. Lewis compared this misunderstanding with his childhood dread of his dentist. His dentist was never content to fix only the single tooth which hurt, but had fearfully ambitious plans for all of his teeth. Jesus taught that if a branch from his vine bears fruit, the Father prunes it. Pruning is painful. If it bears fruit, why in the world doesn’t he leave it as it is? It is because he wants it to bear much more fruit, perhaps by growing in new directions which are not now even imagined.

The destination is that we would one day be “like Jesus” and stand in the presence of God. By grace he is going to get us there, though not all the way in this life. What is being “like Jesus” all about? It is to imitate the virtues he lived out – love, humility, service, forgiveness, willingness to suffer unjustly, courage, to name the main ones. But what are likely ways to be able to learn these virtues? Think about it. How can we learn to love like Jesus if we are surrounded only by people who are easy to love? How can we expect to grow in humility without ever being humiliated? To serve as Jesus did if our service is always extravagantly appreciated? To forgive if we are never sinned against? To willingly suffer unjustly without suffering? To learn courage without ever feeling fear?

If our road is rough and includes disappointment and loss, we may be surprised. We may feel as if the growth of our faith is even going backwards. But how could it be otherwise if the transformation is going to be very deep? When serious loss comes to us, we often think of how to “get over it” as quickly as possible as if the loss was a parenthesis in our lives, to be resumed as quickly as possible, as if it had never happened. But maybe we will never “get over it” in that sense and should start looking for ways that God is changing us through it. Remember the glory of our destination and the vast distance of the journey to get there.

Some get stuck on the word “perfection”. As Jesus used it, perfection was not some brittle moral state of not doing several thousand prohibited activities. It was being able to escape slavery to our own arrogance, obsessions, vanities, selfishness and resentments. It was to be free to love, serve, forgive humbly and wholeheartedly without the clutter, weight, distraction and interference of our sin. To do this is true human excellence, imaging God as Jesus did. It is also recovering our true selves, made in God’s image as we are. If we want something less, we should follow some one else, not Jesus.

The autumn term was quite eventful, beginning as it did with the birth of twin girls to Ben and Nickaela. The student group was good, with a lot of them staying for most if not all of the term. As usual there was a great range of age, background, experience, beliefs and issues that they wanted to engage. This always makes it more fruitful for everybody. As workers we were spread pretty thin, but students were understanding and our helpers, Todd, Stephanie and Danny, who carried a lot of weight, were very helpful, so we were still able to have a good term. Mardi still had a limited involvement for health reasons. The problems of our septic system meant that we could not serve meals in this house until past the middle of the term. We are so very thankful also for gifts that came in for us to pay for the new septic system as well as to keep us afloat with our running expenses. We would otherwise have had to borrow money to pay for it, raising our fixed costs -- which we dread having to do. Thanks to another generous gift, we have a new rug in the main traffic area of the hall.

When you get this letter we will be in the middle of teaching a J-term course in Cultural Apologetics here at L’Abri for Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. We have 14 students enrolled, who will be staying here, with two lectures each day but with less work time than usual L’Abri students. Please pray for this time, January 6 – 18, that it would be an important experience for each of the students and their future service.

Please pray also for the regular L’Abri winter term that will begin with students arriving on January 24th. Pray for God to bring the right people, for our Friday night public lectures, our tutorial times, meal discussions, work, and the whole of our lives here.

We are thankful for Danny Burbeck staying on to become a worker this term. Pray for him in this new capacity. He will be living in the other half of our house. We will be leaning hard on his many gifts. Pray also for Ben and Nickaela as they will be plunged back into the work with their 4-month old twins to care for. We are also thrilled to report that our son Tim and his wife Alice are the proud parents of a baby girl in November. Pray for Mardi, that her allergies and general health and endurance would improve. Pray also for the Morrells as Luke will make the transition to high school next year and may have choices to make about where to go.

Pray for our helpers--Rachel, Amy and Eliza coming for this winter term.
Pray for our finances as all our costs have gone up and we are starting the year a bit lean.

Please pray for the conference in Rochester Minnesota on February 15-16, 2008 (you can find specifics on the L’Abri website). Sue Morrell and I will be speaking there. Pray also for a L’Abri conference in Sacramento, California, July 31-August 3, 2008. The contact person there is Brian Morris, e-mail: blmorris72@earthlink.net., (specifics will be upcoming on the L’Abri website).

We will pray for you that 2008 might be a wonderful year to experience what it is to be on the great journey. As the apostle Paul wrote, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”

Dick Keyes

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We have been sending out a “Praying Family Letter” on e-mail at irregular intervals between these 3 newsletters each year. If you want to pray regularly for us, send us your e-mail address and we will try to keep you better informed about what is going on here.