Living Well

August. The very mention of the month makes me nervous. If I were emperor, August is the month I would strike from the calendar. August is a transition month. We are not quite into a livable rhythm, and yet we are forced to tighten our schedules after two months of vacation and ad hoc existence. The alarm clock rings earlier and oftener if we have school age children. Even if we don’t, we are surrounded by people who do. It is a cultural thing that is unavoidable. We live by the rhythms of the school year. In agrarian cultures, this was not the case. Everyone moved to the rhythms of seed time and harvest. My parents would start to school in the fall and then, when it was time to harvest cotton, school would shut down for six weeks. After the cotton was in, school started back. Those days are long gone, and now we more or less live around the school calendar. In the summers, we vacation (if we are affluent enough to do so), and in August we all  reorient our lives around the education of children. It has been this way my whole life. That is not good or bad––it just is. I didn’t have a choice in this, no more than a farmer has a choice in when he plants and harvests. So much of life is already shaped for us. The question, however, is, how do we inhabit these rhythms? They inevitably will shape us, but how do we shape human lives that reflect the heart of God in the midst of things we can’t control? Do we mindlessly live undistinguished from the culture, or do we allow God to speak into our lives so that we inhabit these rhythms with gospel intentionality?I wonder. I wonder because I have been thinking a lot about where we live shapes and affects us, often in ways we do not even perceive. What Winston Churchill said about architecture, “We shape our buildings and our builds shape us,” I think is equally true of the places we live. We live in suburbia. We are not urban or rural, and because we live in relative ease, affluence, comfort, and safety, we are shaped in ways we just don’t think about. I do think it bears reflection. For years, being influenced by Tim Keller and his talk about “the city,” I didn’t think critically enough about the particular trials and temptations unique to our particular place here in suburbia. While I have often said, “In the city you preach to the prodigal son; in the suburbs you are preaching to the elder brother,” I just never sat down to try and grasp just what the particular pitfalls and landmines of suburbia are—until recently. For this reason, this fall Josh and I will be preaching a 10-week series called, SUBURBAN gODS.I think the thing that got me thinking about this, more than anything else, is my recent experience with foster care and adoption. The thing about suburbia is that we are insulated from a lot of the suffering of the world. I met a whole new world of suffering that was not near or around me—a world I was not intentionally indifferent to, but a world that I just didn’t see. And yet a world that, once you do see it, you can never un-see. There is a lot we don’t see in suburbia, and yet it is here in spades. The number one issue police are called to deal with in Collierville is domestic violence. I met a lady recently who has a ministry that helps women caught up in that violence. One of the most telling things she said to me was that, when she tells people where she lives and what she does, they just don’t want to believe it could be happening out here. And yet it is.Everything in suburbia plays into the idols of individualism, consumption, safety, and busyness, to the point we can lose sight of the gospel, which talks about life on mission––a life of abundance practiced through generosity, hospitality, community, giving, blessing, and self-sacrifice. As Josh and I pondered this series, we agreed that this series has to be apocalyptic. The word literally means an unveiling. We have to pull back the veil to see the deeper realities that make up the world we inhabit if we are actually going to engage in meaningful discipleship, rather than just overlaying the cultural practices around us with a veneer of family values, Bible verses, and self-improvement. This is hard. But the solution for how we can thrive in an even greater sense, greater than we even dreamed of, is found both in the lowly local church and the “Habits of Grace” we talk about all the time. Speaking of which, one of the ways we work on our idol of individualism is starting up in the next few weeks. In fact, we will probably talk about this til you get sick of hearing about it. I am talking about “community as family”. Our Community Groups kick off this month and, if you attend St. Patrick, you need to be in one of these smaller communities. Yes, you have to give up some of your freedom. Yes, you have to be led. Yes, you have to sacrifice. Yes, you might not be like all the people in your group. This is all as it should be; this is all for your good. This is all about the greatest thing God has called you to, which is not freedom—but love. Paul says faith and hope will disappear one day, but love will always remain. In fact, he says, heaven is a world of love. Wouldn’t it be great to know more about some people in your community than you do about the people on Netflix? Real flesh and blood people!I am struck by how much of suburban living is  like a spiritual quest—a quest for the ideal house, life, family, or way of life. We can’t even speak of it without invoking spiritual longings. So here we are, and God’s answer is not to move (I certainly am not) but, to paraphrase the prophet Jeremiah’s words to God’s ancient people, to “build homes in [suburbia] and pray for [human thriving there], for if [suburbia] prospers, so will you.” What a vision! The goal of human existence is not a guilt trip about our stuff, but to thrive even with our stuff and the people we inhabit life with! Glory!