SOUTHBOROUGH L’ABRI PRAYER/NEWSLETTER
Winter, 2006
49 Lynbrook Road, Southborough, MA 01772

Despite regular evidence to the contrary and consistent warnings from the Bible, most of us (myself included) seem to expect the events surrounding our lives to go forward in straight-line, predictable ways. God, whose plans turn out to not be rubber stamps of our own, has his own purposes. This means that our lives do not usually move from stasis to smooth transition to stasis to another smooth transition. For many of us it has more the sense of moving from one crisis to another, each one made more disruptive by our expectations of predictability and tranquility.

Deep in Biblical history there is the story of the exodus. After the years of slavery and oppression in Egypt and all the plagues showing the power of the living God, then finally, finally, the Hebrew people were delivered from slavery. They marched toward the land they had been promised, got to the edge of the Red Sea, and what happened? Here was the Egyptian army again, bearing down on them, pinning them down, trapping them with their backs to the sea. What sort of deliverance was this? “Why did you bring us out here to kill us in the desert?” But as we know, the sea parted, they walked through on dry land and the Egyptian army was destroyed in one of the most dramatic single events in Jewish history. No one who saw it would ever doubt again. Right? Wrong. They doubted God within hours after they could not find drinking water. If you read on in Exodus and Numbers, you see how unanticipated frustrating events created crisis after crisis for them. Their complaints eventually got so serious that God decided, because of their lack of trust, to let them die in the desert and take their children into the promised land.

Samuel anointed David to be king. Did he then assume the throne? No. He spent years being chased all over the Palestinian wilderness, hiding in caves, leaving the country, feigning psychosis, running for his life. As you read the Psalms, you see his accounts of some of the crises of faith that he experienced.

The Schaeffers constructed L’Abri to work into this unpredictable world without trying to pretend that we could control the raising of money, workers, students or to have five and ten year plans – un-American though that was and is. Sure enough, our history has gone in just those unexpected ways. Many times it has been the unpredicted that happened, which has often taken us to the wall of fear and doubt.

Our branch in South Korea has just had one of the most dramatic examples of going to such a wall. They were about to lose their whole property because they had nowhere near the money to buy it by the time stipulated in their lease. In the last few days before the deadline, they rejoiced as a large church spoke of being able to help them out. At the very last minute, the church could not do it. They sunk to deep discouragement. Then at the very, very last minute, after the property was already on the open market, a friend of L’Abri bought it so that they could use it. Rejoicing in the streets!

I do not know why God lets us go so far down into doubt and discouragement. We know that our faith is tested and can grow stronger through suffering and trial. Sometimes we experience that clearly. But sometimes we don’t. We feel tested beyond that faith-growing process – tested to where it is all going in the other direction,  faith dissolving into doubt, panic, even despair -- failing the test. This isn’t the way it is meant to work, is it? Aren’t trials meant to lead quickly to triumphs? It may be through illness, accident, betrayal, abandonment, poverty, loneliness, or bereavement. The faith of “The Lord is my shepherd…” may seem far away and permanently out of reach.

But if you feel this way and read the Bible carefully, you find yourself in good company. This was the experience of many of God’s servants. David’s suffering lasted long enough for him to pray, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” This is not regulation, standardized, coffee table evangelical piety. Nor was Paul’s admission, “…we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.”   I can only guess that there is a kind of growth that God can work into us only when we have lost the peace, confidence and even trust in him that we are accustomed to, painful and unexpected as that is. Surely it will strengthen us to not forget (like the post-exodus Israelites in the desert), but to remember God’s faithfulness to us in times past. But it may also be helpful, as we start this new year, to get better at expecting the unexpected. That can translate into trusting God -- who is nobody’s rubber stamp -- for our future. Maybe it is growing to trust God as a Person, whatever might happen, instead of trusting in what we have first decided is God’s only sensible program for our future.

In L’Abri we have often had our backs to the wall — usually for shortages of money or workers. I still find fear and doubt very close in those times. But God has been amazingly faithful to us. After losing Mark and Terri Ryan to visa problems last spring and Nickaela Fiore to marriage, we wondered how in the world we could manage without those workers. I don’t know how it worked out but it did, and somehow we have had two very fruitful terms since then. Part of the reason was God’s provision of Sarah Barsness, a new worker and good helpers in both terms.

Thank God with us for the students that he sent us. They were very varied, from lots of different places, with all sorts of issues. We do not expect every one to end up “best friends” of everyone else in the house. But we do pray for the students in each group to invest in each other and find that investment one of the most fruitful parts of their time with us. This has happened really wonderfully. Pray for the great battles that many of them face after L’Abri.

We are also thankful because we had a better year financially than last. Although we got low, we never did bottom out. Pray for 2006 and for needed maintenance.

We are grateful for Bobbe Smith, who comes in to do our bookkeeping and office work. Her willingness and competence are a great help to us.

The Morrell family is doing well, with Luke and Nate thriving in school and both enjoying the new snow each time it comes (quite a lot of it already).

Sarah Barsness is also now well established in the upstairs apartment of the big house, and has been doing a great job. She asks for prayer to be able to find the right community outside of L’Abri. This is both necessary and hard to do because of the “on-campus” demands of L’Abri.

Pray for Taylor Siegrist who has been a student at L’Abri in Holland and a student and helper here with us in Southborough. He starts in as a worker this term, living in the apartment in our house.

Our family is doing well. Mardi’s health has held up better so far this winter. I have just sent off the (nearly) final version of Seeing Through Cynicism to Intervarsity Press with great relief. Pray for that book to be a help to the people who need it.

As you receive this, we will be in the middle of an intensive 2-week course (Jan. 8 – 20) for a dozen Gordon Conwell students and some others in Cultural Apologetics here at L’Abri. Pray for my stamina and health to hold up so the course might be a challenge to the lives of these students preparing for leadership in the church.

David wrote in Psalm 30, “For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a life time. Weeping may linger for the night but joy comes with the morning.” May this be the story of 2006 for us all.

Dick  Keyes