October 27, 2005
Well, I’m home. I was in Aurora, Nebraska for the first four days of this week working on a project for work. Lots of work, and not enough time to both do the work and get enough sleep. Far too much like college, if you ask me.
But I’m finally home, and very much glad to be home, having time to spend with Rita and just plain relax. I’m afraid there is more work to be done on this project, but I’m exceptionally thankful to be home. Being on the road, far from close friends and my wife, can be a very lonely place to be.
I’m also extremely grateful that projects like this don’t happen often at my job. It feels so terribly hard to keep God-focused priorities when work takes up almost all of one’s waking minutes.
But I’m home. And maybe back to normal. ;-)
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October 18, 2005
In the past few weeks 5 of our guppies have died. It’s been sad, but not a big deal because they are not my favorite anyways. (bad attitude probably but I got them for more company for the goldfish.) David thinks there might be something in the waters but I didn’t feel the urgency to check yet.
Well, this morning at breakfast we discovered that not only have the guppies died, TV has also died :( But his was by the way of suicide. He jumped out of the tank some time during the night. I’m a little sad but it’s easier to handle a fishes death when I am quite sure it wasn’t my fault. I thought TV was over his jumping days, but I guess not :-/ (there is a bad picture of TV in our “life in 2005 Jan-July” photos if you want to see :))
Other than that, David and I are doing very well! I am super excited to have my sister come visit me in two days!!!!! This is my first visit from my family since we left NB. oh yeah, speaking of which, Saturday marked the one year anniversary of our border crossing with our visa. Not only that but last week Tuesday I fulfilled my last requirement for my green card, now it’s just waiting until they tell us what to do next and hopefully last! Horray!!!
Thanks for your many prayers. Love you! In Christ Rita
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October 11, 2005
After too much thought and work, I think I’ve finally figured out a solution to the comment problem. Unfortunately, that means that I have to convert all of the old comments to the new system. Please bear with me during this process. John and Nate, I’ll let you guys know when I get my reply ready to your comments to my previous post.
Maybe the comments will really work properly from now on!
I am also working on fixing the odd “Table of Contents” pages that have started appearing.
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October 06, 2005
Hi all, I added a few more pictures and a new category in the photo’s heading. I split up the picture of this year so you don’t have to download all the pictures any time you want to see the most recent ones. Ie, I added a new “life in 2005 Aug-Dec” so you can see the more recent ones without repeating the old ones. Enjoy!
Don’t miss David’s latest blog below just because I wrote an entry that pushes his down a bit.
In Christ, Rita
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October 05, 2005
I ran across the article “Capitalists make bad Christians” the other day. It is one of those articles that has so many fundamental points that are difficult to argue with, but the end conclusion just seems so far off base.
The article has a lot of points that the church in the U.S. probably ought to take to heart. For instance:
I can hardly argue with that. The church in America—at least, the church composed of those that label themselves a part of the church—is hardly a model Christian. We don’t even understand the grace given to us properly, nor to we live by it. We live lives devoted to anything and everything but our Savior. We are so focused on “success”—whatever that is—that we brand it spiritual and never consider storing our treasures in Heaven.
But the author continues:
“Capitalism, and the mentality that it espouses, stand in stark contrast to any serious interpretation of Christ’s words.”
Isn’t that precisely the jump in logic that the whole article is built on? Capitalism obviously makes one a pig. If you are capitalist, you will become a one, and have no hope of following Christ.
Is that necessarily the case? Not at all. Yes, capitalism has much of its basis in, “How can we best grow an economy?” But it also has it’s basis in the idea of freedom. Everyone is given a chance to run their business as they see fit by their conscience. You don’t tell me what to do, and I don’t tell you what to do.
(As an aside, there is an emphasis on responsibility that can often be lacking in this discussion. We’ll leave that for a later date, however.)
Isn’t that kind of freedom dangerous? Doesn’t it let people take advantage of other people? Yes, it does. At the very same time, however, it allows us to be as generous as our conscience leads us. We don’t have our “goodness” dictated to us by the government.
There’s a kicker, here, though; one that I just realized this past week. This kind of freedom is precisely what helps us understand grace.
Legislating all the good things that have to happen doesn’t work with humanity. The good things might happen—but our hearts suffer. We think that we will be “good enough” as long as we follow all the rules and pay our taxes to contribute to welfare and social security. When tough times come, we expect everyone else to help us out—because they are “supposed to.” They don’t—and we complain. We complain that the feds didn’t get there soon enough. We complain that there just won’t be enough food. We complain that the manna poured out from Heaven doesn’t last on the seventh day. We complain…
I’m a big fan of freedom. It allows us to disagree. It allows us to hash things out and truly start to understand what is right. It allows us to be who God created us to be.
It’s that freedom—both in the economic and political senses—that makes me proud to be an American. Sure, I’m not always happy with where we are at. I’m especially disappointed with how rarely solid, rational debates happen in our sound-bite politics today. But I’m excited for what this country can be, if we are willing to make it so.
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