After reading my post yesterday, my husband informed me that he had gone to bed at 11 and the kids hadn't gone until 10:00. I guess the time change is just affecting the old woman of the house! I made it to 8:50 last night. -------- Back to the atheists...A debate that I watched between an atheist and a Christian had the atheist saying that a God who would allow such horrible things as this one evidently has should not be worshipped---pain, hunger, war, disease, and especially the crucifixion of his son. I can see his point. It certainly does sound like a horrible God when looked at that way. The Old Testament God often sounds like something I would not want to worship. But if I had to worship, were given no choice, then that would be a dictatorship of a God. Sometimes dictators work well, but usually they turn into tyrants. I think anyone could see, if they looked honestly at it, that a God who gives free choice is a better one to worship, even if it means he allows bad decisions, like war or destroying the planet and causing hunger. A God who will give his son over to death does seem harsh. But a God who loves me enough to even give his son for me, now that is a God I love to worship. And Death did not hold that son, and both he and the Father knew it couldn't. So how can that be bad? Again a lot of that is taken in faith, and therein lies the difference between an atheist and a Christian. --------- I have been thinking for a while about what I will do after the kids leave home. Recently I wrote that we have had to decide that life is different now than when we were children and I will not be going back to work soon like our mothers did. But at some point I need to make some money. So I started thinking about carpentry or electrical work, then yesterday I saw men working on a house at the community college and realized with the way I have messed up my back this year, that is not an option. So then I had to think about where will I be in the future. The common theme was that there will likely always be a small college nearby and with a Master's Degree I could probably teach at the college as an adjunct faculty. So now I have to decide what I would like to have a Master's in...I do NOT want to teach again in public school or private, but maybe education is an option, or history, or government, or speech and communications, or linguistics, or English Composition, or, or ,or Anyone want to offer an opinion? How in the world do we expect 18 year olds to make this decision? ---------- Along the same vein, I will be attending a conference this evening given by the local university. I have gone the last couple of years and enjoy being a "professional" again. We will be discussing education in the global community.