Libby is the best!

No, not Scooter Libby. LIBBY Hallock, our german shepherd mix! She's got the biggest ears of any good lookin' dog out there. Libby is crazy... she eats the soap while we're giving her a bath, and she drinks the water too! We got her about 3 months ago from a shelter, and haven't had any problems with her (except when we left her in the house by herself once). She is very well mannered, most of the time. She loves her toy chicken. For Christmas, she's getting a replacement chicken. :-)

This post is short and sweet, just like her!

Co-authored by Jeremy & Beth.

The sad plight of Iraqi Christians -- Post Saddam

Over the last few years I have followed some of the news about the persecution of Christians in Iraq. I'm going to keep this post short, but basically, Christians had protection under Saddam Hussein. He may have been an evil person but he was a secular Muslim and did not persecute Christians. After Saddam was removed from power, the country has been taken over by militant muslims. Not only the "insurgents", but also the political leaders. Sharia law rules in Iraq. Christians are murdered for simply being Christians. Many Christian churches in Iraq have been bombed, including the one in this photo. Most of the million plus Iraqi Christians have either had to flee Iraq or have been killed.

Here is a recent 60 minutes segment that gives a pretty good glimpse of what is going on in Iraq.

I have a difficult time with the widespread support of the Iraq War by so many American Christians. A prominent Christian professor actually told me recently that what is happening to Christians is not at all relevant to whether or not we should consider the war right or wrong. For the record, I disagree. I've talked about it before, but one issue we must consider is whether or not this war conforms to the Just War Theory. I will be posting more about that later as I would like to get deep into that discussion. In the mean time, we should be in constant prayer for our fellow believers in Iraq, and for that matter, in all countries where they are persecuted for their faith. We should also be eternally grateful to God for the freedoms we have to live out and share our faith in this country.

Christmas Lights!

Well, it took a few days to get all the Christmas lights up, but they are finally up! If I'm not mistaken, we've bought Christmas lights every year that we've been married (3 years) but have never put up Christmas lights. We have either been at my parents, or Beth's dad's house or in Brazil. We are going to be in Houston again this year, but we decided we were going to put up lights anyway. We bought our tree the day after Christmas when we were in Houston several years ago but hadn't set it up either. So, after several evenings of fun we now have our tree up and very nicely decorated by Beth, and we have our lights up. My lovely wife says it looks like the lights were professionally installed, and I will gladly accept that compliment! You can't see it all that well in the picture of the house lights, but the Christmas tree lights are visible through the office window, almost directly below the cross. ...and I wasn't going to advertise my own embarrassment, but I think I will anyway. As I was in the attic, about to plug in the power cord for the cross, I don't really remember exactly what I did, but I found myself looking down at my washing machine through a freshly punched out hole in my ceiling. I thought about taking a picture and putting it up here, but maybe I'll just post before and after pictures once I've got it fixed. So anyway, later this week I'm going to invite a buddy or two over for a "fix my ceiling" party! :-)