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

September 2007

We end up thinking and talking quite a lot around here about what it means to know God. Clichés and quick answers abound, along with “how to” advice books. God clearly describes himself in the Bible as a Person with whom we can and ought to have a “personal relationship”. But “personal relationship” can be misleading in that our other personal relationships are with people from whom we can get “real time” responses with our senses. God is invisible. So how can we not only know things about God, but how can we actually know God? This presents a problem to many if not most Christians. Mother Teresa’s recently published letters show that she struggled with this question much more than most had imagined.

The problem is not new. Ezekiel, even in his great vision (1:27-8) did not see the essence of God or the glory of God or even the likeness of that glory. He wrote that he had seen the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God, three steps of qualification back from “seeing God”. The Psalms often raise the question in anguish, “God, where are you?” The apostle Paul contrasted seeing God now “only through a mirror dimly” to our future encounter with him, face to face (I Cor. 13:12). But we are told that “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1) So maybe the problem should not be such a grievous problem for us. Many people who saw the high-visibility miracles in the Biblical account were not changed much by what they saw. Think of the mixed responses to God’s very visible work through Moses, Elijah or Jesus. At least sometimes, the demand for a visual demonstration of God’s power or presence comes from the human desire to have God on our own terms and under our control. So, what does it mean to know an invisible God by faith? A good start might be to relate faith to two words -- intuition and imagination.

Your intuition is a direct awareness of some truth, though it is not coming to you as an immediate result of a logical deduction or a statistical analysis. You just “know it”. Of course this intuition, if it is true, is not likely to be irrational or a piece of wild guesswork. It usually rests on critical thinking and the evaluation of many previous experiences, observations, trials and errors. Nonetheless, it comes to you as a direct awareness, “standing on the shoulders” of your whole experience of life.

Imagination is closely related. You use your imagination to form mental images, ideas, sights, sounds and the connections between them all – which are not present to your senses at the time. You can use your imagination to construct imaginary, make-believe worlds of fantasy, let’s say of elves, hobbits or superman. But you also use your imagination to construct all sorts of things that are not imaginary or make-believe at all but are very real, yet invisible to you at the time. I am thinking of your awareness of where you were last night, what is on the other side of the wall next to you, your whole world of memory … and God. Faith is the conviction of things not seen with your eyes, but seen with your intuition and imagination – without being imaginary. Faith does not ask us to make believe or pretend anything. But it does ask us, on good grounds, to trust things that are beyond our senses. This is one reason why Jesus so often used children as examples for adults to emulate. Jesus was not trying to be cute or sentimental, but knew that children are much better at taking the invisible more seriously than we are. It wasn’t easy even for people who knew Jesus on earth. He didn’t wear a halo. But he did inspire the ability and willingness in many people to trust in what they could not see.

If we want to know God, we will pray with the Psalmist for God to not hide his face from us, not expecting a visual image but an amazing friendship with One infinitely greater than we are. I want to resist all “how to” approaches, yet cannot resist throwing out some scattered thoughts. Be careful of expecting to duplicate others’ experiences of God, even those whose teaching has been helpful. What happened to them may not be how God deals with you. If you expect their experience, you may focus more on watching yourself for signs of that experience than on looking to God directly. Expect to be surprised. Knowledge of God is not promised to the vaguely curious, but to those who hold onto God’s word and seek him as for hidden treasure. Many are met by God in their suffering and loss, not in their times of success. Honesty about suffering is vital. We could go on to talk of prayer, the necessity of understanding grace, the experience of love, beauty and the life of the church with its teaching, community and sacraments.

C.S. Lewis would not give advice for pursuing God, having always felt like the one being pursued. But he did make some suggestions for promoting God’s absence which should give us some hints about independence from the flow of our culture. “Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status and (above all) on your grievances. Keep the radio on`. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.”

We completed a very good summer term back in July. The group came together very well. It was unusual to have so many stay through most of the summer term because usually we have an almost complete turnover of students each June. When students stay longer they are able to get substantially more out of it. Thank you, those of you who have been praying for L’Abri because we have seen God at work both in arranging the sometimes extraordinary events to get students here, and then also to work in their lives once they are here. Please keep on praying for them. Some of the battles that they face are formidable.

After the end of the term Sue, Mardi and I went to Salem, south of Portland, Oregon to do a L’Abri conference there. It was exciting to meet lots of new people and have an atmosphere with great eagerness for discussion and interaction with us.

You may remember that Ben and Nickaela were expecting twins. Just as the term ended, her doctors put Nickaela on bed-rest for fear that they would arrive too soon. She was allowed to get up only at the end of August and in time for a baby shower that we had here on Sept. 1. A couple of hours after the last people left, Ben took her to the hospital and Eleanor and Abigail were born the next afternoon. The twins are a little bit premature but everyone is doing very well. Give thanks and pray for them all.

As you get this letter, we will have just begun our autumn term with a whole new group of students. Please pray for them and for all that will happen here in the next 2 ½ months. We have a particular challenge in that the septic system for our house failed in late July. We need a whole new system. This presents a great financial challenge, but also makes it impossible to serve student meals from our house until we get a new system. It will put a lot of pressure on the kitchens in the big house, on the Morrells and the helpers, Todd, Stephanie and Danny. Pray for them.

Luke and Nate Morrell go back to school this week. It will be Luke’s last year at The Imago School. Joe and Sue ask for prayer for wisdom about where he should go next.

Mardi’s health has been up and down. Her allergies are restricting her quite a lot. Pray that her allergy injections would be a substantial help.

Please pray for our finances.

Pray also for Taylor who left as a worker in July and is beginning study at Regent College in Vancouver.

As we pray to know God, know that our surest hope is that he knows us. This is not a cause for fear but of confidence since we know him to be a God of grace.

Dick Keyes