RaMbLeS
Welcome to RaMbLeS, a collection of weekly musings on life and Scripture. It all began in 2005 on Google’s blogspot as the aBeLOG (a name now recycled), a semi-autobiographical devotional that attempted to keep well-wishers abreast of my activities as I relocated to Scotland for a few years. Since my return, I’ve continued my RaMbLeS, and here’s its most recent incarnation on Homiletix, as random reflections usually based on current news articles and travel experiences and whatever else takes my fancy!
Snow?
Temps are spiking all over the world in a roasting heatwave.
Reported the New York Times recently:
On a recent Tuesday, the heat index in Frisco, Texas, spiked above 100 degrees. While asphalt bubbled beneath a scorching sun, Katelin Schebler was relaxing on a bench in a room that looked like a stylish meat locker. Swaddled in a robe, mimosa in hand, she was writing in her journal under a gentle snowfall.”
Yup, that’s right: “a gentle snowfall.” In Frisco, Texas!
Schebler,
Mean?
A recent study in Scientific Reports, “Evolution of Moral Expression in Song Lyrics,” from researchers at Queen Mary University, London, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, claimed pop songs were getting meaner!
They analyzed the lyrics of several hundred thousand English-language songs, comparing two separate datasets, one from 1960 to 2010, and the other from 2011 to 2023. Expressions of immorality—things like harm, cheating, and rule-breaking—have, apparently,
Revenge?
National Public Radio (NPR) revently conducted an interview with attorney, James Kimmel, Jr., lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, and author of The Science of Revenge.
Maybe a car cuts you off in traffic. Hey, let’s do the same thing to him at the next light. Apparently, we are rewarded by our brains for such revenge!
Kimmel:
Neuroscience has shown that revenge activates the same area of the brain that activates for substance use disorders, for, you know,
Internalization!
One might think, or have heard others exhort, that keeping a stiff upper lip and not bothering others with one’s troubles is a sign of strength and resilience. One would be wrong, according to “Stress Internalization Is a Top Risk for Age-Associated Cognitive Decline among Older Chinese in the U.S.,” published in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, by scientists from Rutgers and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The study followed 1,528 Chinese
Lying!
Study Finds, an independent agency consolidating interesting scientific studies and results, recently reported on an interesting piece of research recently, that sought to compare states in the USA and rank them based on fraud reports and on how many people confessed to lying.
Coming in at #1 was Nevada, America’s most deceitful state, with almost 60,000 fraud reports filed in 2024. Nearly one in five residents admitting they lie often in ye olde state.
But the big surprise
Psychosis?
He thought he had unlocked the secrets of the universe. Yup, he figured he’d solved unlimited fusion energy. He had lifted the veil on the mysteries of black holes and solved the Big Bang. And, in a final coup, he fulfilled Einstein’s dream of a single unifying theory that explains how everything—everything!—works.
How could he pay God back for all of his “inspired revelations” and share them with God’s people? He hit upon an idea.
Confessed Tom Millar,
Hasslers!
Difficult people in your life? Happens to everybody. But it’s more than just our moods that are affected, apparently. They can age you!
So report sociologists from New York University, University of South Florida, and University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “Negative Social Ties as Emerging Risk Factors for Accelerated Aging, Inflammation, and Multimorbidity.”
We investigate the role of ‘hasslers,’ people in one’s
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching. 