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!
Truth!
You want to be healthy? Eat your fruits and veggies, exercise regularly, … and don’t tell lies!
Anita Kelly, professor of psychology at Notre Dame, presented her “science of honesty” research at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association the other day.
Real?
Friday, with a couple of friends, I went to see “Dark Knight Rises,” Christopher Nolan’s final offering in the Batman trilogy.
And now I’m tired. Yes, tired.
Mid-air hijackings, Batmobile, Batpod, and Bat (his flying thingamajig) chases, chaos galore, havoc aplenty, nihilism and anarchy, violence and killings, nuclear bombs, mushroom clouds, guns, guns and more guns, flying from buildings, escaping from caves, explosions, tanks, collapsing bridges, and every conceivable
Neglect!
The Hāna Highway (aka Road to Hana) is a 68-mile stretch of asphalt in east Maui. It takes about 3 hours to navigate though, with 620 serious curves and 59 bridges (most of them only one lane wide). One side you have lush, verdant rainforest with streams and waterfalls and all. On the other, cliffs and a raging sea with beaches with gold sand, black sand, and red sand! Spectacular!
Somewhere on this road in the middle of nowhere is Coconut Glen’s ice cream stand.
Glen
Rain!
Just. Stop. Raining.
That was the rather odd command issued in a Times of London editorial last week.
Yes, the Brits are getting tired of rain. What with the Olympics and all, this is a wet season promising to douse all the athletic excitement. Londoners, in particular, are getting tired of the miserable weather, which has been plaguing them for months.
Every day—drizzles and downpours, sprinkles and showers. Wet. Flood alerts all over the country. The rain is coming down
Rest!
Another busy summer. Can’t you tell?
Appearances, folks, are deceptive. It has been/is a busy summer— about 3 months of weekly preaching, two writing projects, another being polished and finalized, clinical schedules, …. So that respite in the hot tub at our resort in Maui a couple of months ago was very welcome.
Not that I don’t appreciate the busyness of life, especially when I get to do things I thoroughly enjoy. But it was fun to lie around in Maui and do
Snapshot!
They say that we eat first with our eyes. Which is to say, if it looks good, I’m going to enjoy it more.
Scientists, though, have gone further. Apparently food that looks good can make dishes that are bland and not up to par taste better. And—get this!—you can achieve the same effect by just looking at pictures of good food.
In work jointly done by neuroscientists in Lausanne and Tokyo, they declared here:
Everywhere?
Several months ago, 11mark, a marketing and advertising agency, put out the results of a study of people’s cell phone habits.
The study was labeled “IT in the Toilet.” It went where no other surveys cared to go to assess the “bathroom benchmark” for cell-phone usage.
Apparently 75% of Americans don’t go to the bathroom alone—they take their mobile devices along for company: 91% of those between 28 and 35 years of age. And even 47% of those 65 and older have
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. 