This post is the last in a series of four written to serve as discussion starters for a group of university students doing an alternative spring break with the Farm Workers Support Committee here in South Jersey and in eastern Pennsylvania.

It is easy to find in the Bible exhortations to patience in times of suffering and to humility in the face of demands made by life and other people. Be long-suffering. Do not complain. Accept your limitations and the various affronts to your pride that come with living in this world as well as those which come from the world’s reactions to your conscious decisions to seek the will and way of God. Do not insist upon your own way, but do what is best for others. Be a servant.

It is one thing for me to give such advice, such encouragement to humble faith, to myself as needed. It is quite another matter for me to give it from a position of privilege and comfort to someone else being made to suffer. That’s the cheap and dirty trick we need to avoid.