"live sin the suburbs"

Yesterday morning I was guest teaching a Sunday school class at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, and I was amused by this typo in the bulletin:

"More than half of the population now live sin the suburbs."

Live sin the suburbs! I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds dastardly.

This weekend seemed busier than usual. Saturday morning we went to the arboretum with our local Down syndrome network group. Ellen and I led worship Saturday evening, and after church we had a children's ministry kickoff time of food and games. Then Sunday morning I was with the good people at Immanuel, and in the afternoon our neighborhood association had its annual picnic with food and games. Rather exhausting and draining, all told. I was so wiped out that I kept falling asleep while reading Return of the Jedi with Josiah.

It occurred to me that this is part of the challenge of suburban life. It can be overly busy, leaving us frazzled and worn out. And we can be tempted to check out, to just say, forget it - never mind getting involved in the community or trying to connect with neighbors. It's too tiring. It's easier to forget the world and just live our own privatized lives in our isolated bubble. Even though I'm an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs, I've been feeling more introverted lately and feel like hiding from the world sometimes.

But I have to remind myself that it's good to be intentional to meet neighbors and work toward building community. A new family moved in across the street from us this past week, and I brought over a flyer inviting them to the association picnic. I was glad to see that they showed up, and their kids played with our kids. (There were three little boys at the picnic all named Alex. And Josiah's middle name is Alexander. Kind of funny. I wanted to yell, "Hey, Alex!" and see if they all turned around. But I didn't.) We re-met another family (we had met them briefly while trick-or-treating last year), and we got to know them a little, exchanged phone numbers and said we should set up a playdate sometime.

So even though it might have been easier to just stay home and nap, I'm glad we got to meet some of our neighbors. It's all part of living Christianly in the suburbs, I think.