Charge?
A wedding isn’t cheap (and that’s not a snarky remark from a lifelong single guy). Asserted the wedding website, The Knot, after a survey of 10,000 couples who had hitched the knot in 2023:
The national average cost of a wedding in 2023 was $35,000, which is a $5,000 increase from 2022’s average wedding cost of $30,000.”
But “average” has become unsustainable for Mr. Hassan Ahmed, 23, according to The New York Times. So he’s taken the unusual stop
Longevity!
Maria Branyas Morera, an American-born Catalan lady, died in her sleep last week. She was 117 years and 168 days old (4 March 1907–19 August 2024), the oldest living person after the death of the almost-119 year-old Lucile Randon in January 2023, and the eighth oldest person in history (according the Guinness World Records). The next in line is Tomiko Itooka, of Osaka, who is 116+.
Ms. Branyas Morera was a “supercentenarian,” one who lives beyond 110 years, an accomplishment
Goal!
There was always (or seemingly always) the “purpose-driven” life by Rick Warren & Co. But a search of Amazon also revealed other p-d books relating to God himself, youth ministry, legacy, church, leadership, retirement, organization, branding, marketing, pricing, achievement, school, work, teacher, husband (didn’t find a p-d wife, but there is a p-d woman, a p-d relationship, a p-d marriage, and even a p-d teenager), as well as a p-d physician’s assistant,
Shift!
Researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Nottingham, recently asked a probing question: “Do Moral Values Change with the Seasons?” This was the title of a paper published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.
Here, we report evidence of seasonal variation in Americans’ endorsement of some—but not all—moral values. … We report evidence that people’s moral values change with the seasons. Analyses of a decade
Devotion!
Recently, I answered a couple of questions for a series A Scholar’s Devotion on a blog maintained by a Southern Seminary student. His request:
I ask scholars and seminary professors: 1) how they spend their devotional time so that seminary students (and anyone else, really) can grow in their devotional life and become more enamored by Christ amidst the rigor of seminary academics (or, just the rigor of life); and 2) how they continue to love him with all their mind,
Musicmaking!
Yes, we are all losing our edges. “What was your name, again?” “Where are those keys?” “What did I come upstairs for?” Etc.
But there might be a way out. Say researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, in “Age and Familiarity Effects on Musical Memory,” published in Public Library of Science One the other day. They explored how age related to ability to remember melodies. Good news: when it came to recognizing musical themes, older
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.