Fasting!
With the world teetering on the brink of an abyss from the pandemic of COVID-19, what can we do?
Of course, wash your hands, keep your distance, and, above all, trust your God. Of course!
How about a bit of fasting and prayer?
This week a seminary colleague drew my attention to the World Evangelical Alliance’s call for a “Global Day of Prayer and Fasting,” for today, Sunday, March 29, 2020.
Fasting and prayer are traditional spiritual disciplines that the church has
Distance?
How things have changed in a matter of days!
Writes a correspondent for the Associated Press:
It did not come all at once, though it came quite rapidly. As had happened in other lands, there was no explosion, no invasion other than a microscopic one that nobody could see. There was no fire, no flood, no famine. There were no barbarians at the gates. … The weather was the same weather. The streets were the same streets. The emptiness fell bit by bit, piece by piece ….
Violin!
The other day a strange thing was heard inside the surgical operating room of King’s College Hospital, in London. The strains of Mahler and Gershwin.
On a violin! Played by a patient! While undergoing surgery! For a brain tumor!
Dagmar Turner, 53, a former management consultant from the Isle of Wight developed a malignancy on her brain’s right frontal lobe, close the area controlling the fine movement of her left hand.
The good lady, Ms. Turner, and her surgeons wanted
Rats!
You might have to think twice before you call someone a “rat!”
“Harm to Others Acts as a Negative Reinforcer in Rats” announced researchers from the Netherlands in Current Biology last week.
Apparently, rats avoid harming other rats! They have—wait for it!—empathy!
The scientists trained 24 rats of both sexes to push two different levers to get a treat, until the animals developed a preference for one lever. Then these sadomasochistic investigators (!) turned
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.