Journey into Forever

     I feel like celebrating today. It's a real joy for me to see so many good Christian themed movies out for a change. Last night at church I saw a wonderful movie titled "Octoberbaby".  If you have not seen it, you should.  It looks at abortion and adoption from a whole different perspective.  The child's.  As I watched, I thought about all the little girls and boys who did not survive their mother's abortion. Then my mind drifted to people I know, family members even, who were pregnancies that were unplanned and some for a while even unwanted.  Babies who might have been aborted had their mothers made that choice.  And I was sickened.  I can't imagine a world without those people in it.  What a loss it would be.       Now I know there are people who make the argument that there are so many unloved children in the world that ending abortion would just cause more children to suffer. While that may or may not be true, I believe excuses can be found for any s

     I am not really political.  I seldom discuss politics, partly because if I got into a real political discussion my ignorance would show immediately and frequently.  My daughter got all of the political genes.  She used to go to her grandparents' home next door and discuss politics with them for hours.  Apparently they had some pretty lively discussions.  It is one of many things she misses about her Papa.  Consequently, this election year is a highlight of her existence.  Not me.  I'm somewhat annoyed, bored with the ads, and ready for it to be over.       That being said, I can't downplay the importance of politics, especially for Christians.  We have a responsibility to vote for candidates who have positions in line with our beliefs.  In America, it hasn't seemed all that important before, because most candidates espoused Christian beliefs, even when their personal lives did not necessarily back up their claims.  But our country, and the world in general, are mu

     I have been retired from teaching for three full years.  After teaching for 31 years, I didn't think I would do very well at 'not working'.  I had a really hard time when my children left the nest, and I figured this would be just as difficult for me, if not more.  When my kids left, I had my job and 20+ kids to nurture in the classroom.  Retirement meant no work, no kids, nothing to do and nothing to occupy my time. Some of you know, and all of you will see, that the amount of time I spent working was so huge that I didn't see how I could fill it without my job. I was wrong about that. More on that later.      Let me explain.  When I was working, and some of you know this full well, it was very important to me to do a good job.  VERY important to me.I knew how critical the influence of a teacher was, especially when teaching very young students.  Getting them started was a huge responsibility to me.  For part of that time, I was a Christian also.  I knew enough a