And just now I have discovered your post…Is it a little late in the game for me to respond now? Anyway, it’s worth a shot, so here’s my response. I am afraid I haven’t read too much lately. Part of that is my inability to pay attention long enough to get past the first two chapters in any book these days. But, I was successful in reading a few of John MacArthur’s books some time back that started my change of thinking on my own walk with the Lord and really digging into the theology behind everything. Plus, that led me to his GTY podcasts and other downloads of sermons that I listen to fairly often.

I came from a pretty reformed background (or so I recognize now) so this rings very true with how I’ve understood Scripture growing up. But, still without understanding, really digging into, the theology and testing the things which I have learned, it is so easy to slip into the sugary side of “Christianity” and deem everything that is labeled “Christian” as truly that. Now, I really and truly no better. I see the dangers in all of that. To complement that, as I learn more and more, reformed theology exposes the flaws that really are at the core of the sugary stuff. If they believe man has some sort of power to save himself, then it makes sense to dramatize and emotionalize everything to a certain degree. On the flipside, I rationalize that that is poor thinking and “strategy,” if you will, simply because that’s not the way to lead anyone to a truly educated decision anyway. But, that argument is worthless when you see the bigger picture…that they’re missing out on God’s Sovereignty in play. That [understanding God's Sovereignty] has opened up Who God is so much more to me in the past couple years than all the teaching I seemed to miss out on before throughout my 18yrs or so of solid Christian education.

Oh well, I’ve rambled on and it’s even buried here in an old post. It’s good to know though that we’re not alone. And, I will definitely begin reading more on this subject and more. Just need to get back to feeding the brain! We actually have RC Sproul’s Holiness of God here at the house, so I may just start back there.

Cindy, Someone sent me this link from Franklin Sanders on the subject of community that interacts with your comment.

For those of us staying in urban areas, I often wonder about how we could go about living more simply. What about buying up foreclosed houses on the same street and revitalizing the area with a group of people with the same goals? This builds a physical community (because I believe proximity is important to thriving as one) and can help families afford homes with less/no debt.

I have other ideas, but I figure that building codes would probably interfere.

Thank you for the invitations. We’re not settled yet, so you never know.

Thanks for missing me online, but it’s just not the season for much now.

PS - We could really use some good reformed Christian friends added to the area (perhaps a pastor or former pastor with his growing family???) even if we are near the area that named a highway after Billy Graham!

This scenario, which I could have never foreseen, made a way for us to be accepted in the community. We are visible and therefore accepted. I don’t think I would have had the confidence for this kind of living when my older boys were young but right now I just love it.

I almost feel like I have become the patron of small town living even over deep country living. Our town has less than 500 in population though. I honestly think this is more conducive to the agrarian ideal than isolation out of town but of course, it is tricky.

We live next door to our inlaws on land they gave us (which is the only way we could have built in this community). Growing up I only stayed put in one place for a while, and I never put down roots there because I was very traumatized by being hated in school. The closest I had to roots was at my grandma’s former farm. But I have put down roots here like I would not have thought possible. My father-in-law has a lot of land due to buying it back when it was cheaper. He recently decided to sell some. My husband and I privately ran some numbers but we just couldn’t have done it. Then the appraisal came back for less than half of what we had thought it was, a quarter or less of what my father-in-law originally wanted. And we are buying about [large number I don't remember] acres. (Our in-laws are thrilled, too; they would have been willing to give us this price if the appraisal from the state had come back like they wanted, and they really hated to sell it for so little…) So we are keeping the “ancestral land” (really only goes back a generation, but it feels that way to me) in the family, and have more land than our children could use even if God gives me as many as I want (hoping for 17…)
We don’t own anything outright but my husband is the finance guy and he’s fine with it. Basically it’s something like, if the interest on our investments is better than the interest on our debt, we are on the positive side.

Hey Amy, there is some land across the street from us for sale… Nice neighborhood, except for the dump, the airport, and the cost of living. You can’t walk to civilization, but if you like swamps, ponds, rivers, herons, ducks, deer, skunks, hawks, snakes, salamanders, coyotes, ice and snow, turkeys, bats, doves, robins, chickadees, nuthatches, juncoes, cardinals, goldfinches, wolf spiders, hornets, vernal pools, frogs, mosquitoes, black flies, rock walls, old church foundations, buried glass bottles, mountain laurel, jewelweed, jack-in-the-pulpit, cowslips, mud, wild strawberries and blackberries… we got all that in my (expanded) back yard. There’s something to be said for the city, too, but I am very happy where I am. We even have surprisingly little poison ivy for this area. The only thing I don’t like about this place is it’s in Massachusetts (but the most conservative town here). And everyone has 2.5 kids.