Good Questions from L'Abri

Dick Keyes of the L'Abri fellowship in Southborough sends out a newsletter a few times a year to keep L'Abri supporters and alums up to date with current events. (Mr. Keyes was the professor of Cultural Apologetics at Gordon-Conwell, a class which won my prestigious "Best Class I've Ever Taken in My Life" award shortly after I completed it. I honestly think about something I learned in that class every day.)

Anyway, Mr. Keyes includes a short essay with each newsletter, and I found his winter newsletter to pose some good, practical questions to bear in mind during hardship viz. framing them in terms of becoming like Jesus (c.f., Heb. 12), which is, of course, our highest goal:

"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?"

What I like about these questions is that they can both bring quiet and disquiet to the soul: quiet to the one enduring hardship, disquiet (perhaps conviction) to the one who is too comfortable too often.