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!
Union?
Yet another interesting development from this strange world that is occupied by some strange people (which, needless to say, includes strange you and strange me).
Seattle. December 2011. An abandoned warehouse was scheduled to be demolished to make space for a new construction, an apartment complex.
Shepherd!
There are several of these images in the İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri (Istanbul Archeological Museums): the Good Shepherd statuettes.
In the early centuries of the church, no images of Christ were sculpted, painted, or drawn. Rather artists depicted Jesus symbolically, and one of the commonest depictions was of him as the Good Shepherd.
This metaphor is derived from Jesus’ teaching in John 10.
“I am the good shepherd,
Defense!
Ye olde city of Dallas invited me to sit on a jury the other day.
With the force of the law behind them, and threats of dire retribution in front, I was notified that they wanted me there, on that date, at that time, for that case.
I went, I sat, I was selected.
Voir dire, they call it. I don’t know why. It is a Latin/Old French legal phrase that means something like “tell the truth.” It is the process by which jurors are questioned about backgrounds and biases
Surrender!
The oddest thing happened the other day.
Usually, the capture of a Taliban commander calls for expending vast resources, maintaining constant vigilance, and conducting complex operations.
Not for Mohammad Ashan, a mid-level Taliban honcho in Paktika province of Afghanistan. The man was wanted on suspicion of plotting attacks on Afghani security forces. Officials peppered the locality with wanted posters with his name and picture.
Well, Mr. Ashan, our man himself, last week,
Gratitude!
It’s a weird structure. The Basilica Cistern (or Yerebatan Sarayı = Sunken Palace) in Istanbul. Right across from the Hagia Sophia. Apparently there was a great palace on top in the 3rd and 4th centuries—hence “Basilica.” Later, it was converted into a cistern, mostly underground, by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century.
It is appropriately named, though. The cistern is the size of a palace and actually looks like one. It is a huge underground chamber
God-Man!
It was called Chalcedon (sounds like “Kal-see-dun”), an ancient maritime town in Asia Minor, on the coast of the Sea of Marmara, at the mouth of the Bosphorus.
Today it is called Kadıköy and it is a district of Istanbul, located on Istanbul’s Asian side.
I was wandering around in Kadıköy, a few weeks ago, in search of the best boregi (layers of phyllo, buttered and soft, dusted with sugar, drenched in custard). And I found the perfect sample in Bizim Ev,
Godliness?
While in Istanbul the other day, I had the delight of viewing a Sema—“whirling dervishes” in action. The ceremony has been proclaimed by the UNESCO as amongst the “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.”
These folks are part of the Mevlevi Brotherhood, a Sufi order within Islam, named after Mevlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystic. Apparently Rumi was strolling through a town marketplace once when he heard
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. 