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!
Lucky?
Luck /lək/ (noun) ● success or failure apparently brought by chance
Did you know that houses with addresses that have lucky numbers in them sell for more? A study of a British Columbia neighborhood with a significant percentage of Chinese residents showed that house numbers ending in “8” sold at a 2.5% premium. Those ending with an unlucky “4” sold at a 2.2% discount.
(BTW, the Beijing Summer Olympics opened at 08:08:08 on the 8th day of the 8th month of 2008.)
And
Gordo!
Last weekend, my nephew, John, and I went on a BBQ hunting mission around Austin, the capital of ye olde state of Texas. More about that another time.
Saturday night, after watching the 1,500,000 Mexican free-tailed bats hightail out of Congress Ave bridge at dusk (and more about that, too, another time), we felt a hankering for something sweet. This, you must remember, after a day of engorging ourselves on brisket all day from various highly rated purveyors of the same.
Anxious?
OK, I bet it’s happened to you too. We are minding our own little businesses—sitting at our desks or standing in our kitchens or watching our TVs—with our cell phones in our pockets or purses. Suddenly we feel it, the bzzt, bzzt, bzzt of an incoming call or text or email.
We immediately check the phone out, but … nothing. No call. No text. No email. We check again. Did someone play the next move in Words With Friends? Nope. Someone loved my Instagram pics? Nope.
Perfection?
Neil deGrasse Tyson had a gripe. With James Cameron, film producer, deep-sea explorer, screenwriter, visual artist, editor, etc. The Cameron of Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), and Avatar (2009) fame. But it was the Titanic (1997), that induced Tyson’s gripe.
Cameron’s been nominated for six Academy Awards and won three for Titanic. Over $2 billion grossed for that movie. Hollywood’s top earner for 2011 as nominated by Vanity Fair.
Now Tyson is no slouch himself.
Fading?
The man is an icon, the “god” of cricket. He’s broken pretty much every record there is to break. And he’s been at it for over two decades, having debuted in 1989, when most of his current teammates were toddlers!
And, yes, he’s also 39, an age when most cricketers are retired and sipping their iced drinks in a commentary circle or in a columnist’s chair or in a coach’s class.
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, however, is still around.
But probably not for long.
After
Command!
Last year, a biker riding without a helmet hit his brakes for some reason, lost control of his vehicle, went over the handlebars, hit his head on the pavement, and was taken to Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, NY, where he was pronounced dead.
Philip A. Contos, 55, of Parish, north of Syracuse, would have survived, State Troopers said, if he had been wearing a Department of Transportation (DOT) approved helmet.
The irony of it all was that Contos was maneuvering
Good?
I’ve seen creepy worms in wounds. In a bad—really bad!—case of leprosy, many years ago, on a farmer who did nothing about his disease. Open wounds with gruesome maggots! Straight out of some horror movie. Very high Yuck! factor, indeed!
But, apparently, they can do you good.
In a recent issue of one of the major journals of my discipline, The Archives of Dermatology, researchers in Caen and Lyon, France, studied 119 patients with a non-healing, sloughy wound
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. 