Selfie!
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an intriguing article that dealt with a published report late last year in the peer-reviewed Italian art journal Critica d’Arte.
Michelangelo may have secretly painted himself onto the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, portraying himself as God with arm outstretched to spark life in a lounging Adam. How about that?
Said the author of that journal report, Adriano Marinazzo, a curator of special projects at Virginia’s
Earworms!
No, these aren’t actually those slimy creatures with cylindrical bodies devoid of limbs or eyes.
Earworms are bits of music that keep echoing in your brain and you can’t get rid of it. AKA stuck song syndrome, sticky music, musical imagery repetition, intrusive musical imagery, or involuntary musical imagery.
A 2020 study of American college students showed that 97 percent had experienced an earworm in the past month. One in five had these creatures crawling in their
Conversation!
Yeah, we all have our smartphones and our little thumbs are texting away all the time, at work, in class, during church, in the bathroom, at the grocery store, and any other place you can think of. So we might tell ourselves that we’re getting enough social interaction, maintaining adequate interpersonal relationships. We might. But we’d be wrong. At least as far as the consequences of such interactions are concerned.
Wanna have a happier state of mind and increased
Immortality?
This guy is a smart dude: Ray Kurzweil, 75. Computer scientist, writer, inventor, and futurist. He’s done pioneering work on speech recognition, optical character recognition, electronic musical instruments, artificial intelligence, etc. Winner of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States’ highest honor in technology. Member of the National Academy of Engineering. Inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Twenty-one honorary doctorates.
Judges 13:1–14:20
Though God remains gracious, a devotionless rejection of divine interests in favor of selfish passions leads only to disaster.
Samson is the last judge in the book, and his story gets the most space—four whole chapters and ninety-six verses. The account begins, as usual, with a statement that the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of God (13:1–2). And so they are given over to the Philistines for forty years—the longest oppression on record in Judges.
And, heeeeere’s
Purpose?
There was a fad, especially in Christendom, some years ago to label everything “Purpose Driven.” It all began with Saddleback Church’s Rick Warren publishing a Bible study in 2002, The Purpose Driven Life. A quick search of Amazon revealed all kinds of titles with “Purpose Driven” in them. P-D Life of Helping Others, P-D Church, P-D Youth Ministry, P-D Marriage, P-D Innovation, P-D Leadership, P-D School, and even P-D Retirement. The fad, most
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.