Value?
The Wall Street Journal reported recently about thieves who are after cattle gallstones—those hard substances formed inside the gall bladder from precipitated components of the gland’s secretion, bile. Most humans try hard to stay away from gallstones. Not these days.
You see, these things are some of the most prized ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM—a $60 billion-per-year industry), so much so, that traders in cattle gallstones are willing to pay as
Heat!
You feeling the heat? You should be. Especially if you are moving into the grandparenting phase of life. (No, this is nothing to do with grandkids, more to do with the phase of life, or, to put it bluntly, as you get old.)
“Home Ambient Temperature and Self-reported Attention in Community-Dwelling Older Adults” published recently in the Journal of Gerontology by scientists from the Marcus Institute for Aging Research affiliated with Harvard Medical School,
Stressed?
Stress! That’s what we don’t need at all. It is hazardous. Besides the waste of adrenaline, the rise of blood pressure, the agony of emotions, etc., it turns out that stress also affects your memory!
So claimed researchers from Toronto, Amsterdam, and Seattle, in “Stress Disrupts Engram Ensembles in Lateral Amygdala to Generalize Threat Memory in Mice,” published in Cell.
[An engram, BTW, is a unit of cognitive information that is imprinted in a physical substance—parts
2 Timothy 1:1–18
God’s call on his people involves a faithful, unashamed endurance of inevitable suffering as they undertake their divine commission, empowered graciously by God’s Spirit, confident of his seeing their work through, and anticipating rewards.
A single sentence makes up 1:3–5: Paul begins with his thanks to God in 1:3, but the reason for his gratitude is given only in 1:5. This sentence is bookended by the mention of ancestors: “forefathers” shows up in 1:3, and
Simple!
Life is complicated. The world is, of course, complicated, with all its politics, insecurities, uncertainties, and fogginess overall. But so are our own lives: feeble, beset with frailty, and with sinful foibles. Life is, indeed, complicated. And messy.
And always, when facing a particular complex issue or problem, we want a simple solution, not a convoluted one that only multiplies the complexities and messinesses of life. That this is always the case with us
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.