According to their accountant, Mr. and Mrs. Asu are in trouble.

Annual income:     $25,000 (this has been declining for years)

Annual spending:   $36,000 (this has been increasing for years)

Credit card debt:  $161,000

Total debt:         $700,000 (includes all their obligations)

Mr. and Mrs. Asu aren’t employed. Their income is provided by their children who are old enough to work, but are still living at home. Child 1, with the best job, pays $20,000 per year. Child 2, with the second best job, pays $5,000. The other two work but don’t pay anything. They are the parent’s favorites.

Mr. and Mrs. Asu have max’d out numerous credit cards and all of their income goes to make the minimum payments. But, they continually find ways to obtain new cards and keep spending more. In fact, this is the delight of their lives.

We are privileged and delighted to have my mom in our home for Christmas this year. She is 91 years old and lives in Santa Ana, California, but we flew her out to Colorado to spend a month with us. She went from sea level and southern California weather to 7200 feet and snow, but it hasn’t fazed her a bit. That’s because she is one of our nation’s “Rosie Riveters”. During World War II, she helped build B-25 bombers in Kansas City and then P-51 Mustangs in Engelwood, California. She was one of the few women to have a pilot’s license in those days. So coming to the Rocky Mountains at 91 is no big deal for her.

We had an interesting conversation this morning. As I was reading the paper she asked me if there was “any good news, today?”

I had to search a little, but I found some.

I listened to President Obama’s remarks tonight, as he not only addressed the grieving people in Newtown, Connecticut, but the nation. The murder of 20 small children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School has grieved us all.

I appreciated his quoting of 2 Corinthians 4 and Luke 18 and his remarks that acknowledged the plans of God, the hope of heaven and that our life here on earth is fleeting.

He also stated that this tragedy has left us with some hard questions, that we shouldn’t tolerate this kind of violence anymore and that he was going to use the power of his office to engage with others to find how to prevent tragedies like this from happening. He wondered if we would simply say that the politics are too hard.

NBC Sunday night football was rolling along nicely when Bob Costas popped in and delivered what many would call a political exploitation of the terrible events that occurred Saturday morning in Kansas City. Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Chiefs, shot and murdered his girlfriend, Kassandra Perkins, mother of his 3-month-old daughter, and then committed suicide at the Chiefs practice facility in front of his head coach and General Manager.

Costas made a passionate plea against “our gun culture” and quoted from Jason Whitlock, a Fox Sports writer, that “if Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra would both be alive today”. Whitlock, in a follow-up interview, says that he didn’t go far enough in his article, and that he believes the National Rifle Association is “the new KKK”—highly incendiary words.

Awesome sunrise this morning.

I knew it was a sunrise and not a sunset because on my run, as I dodged the early High School traffic that transforms our lazy country
road into a swarm of half-awake teenage drivers, I watched the sky go
 from dark to light and knew that the sun was coming up not going down. 
When Benjamin Franklin was sitting in the tension-filled room as they 
contemplated and worked out the new U.S. Constitution, he often looked 
at the back of Washington’s chair and wondered if the carving
 represented a rising or setting sun.