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!
Midnight?
It’s dark. It’s night. In fact, it’s midnight. And I’m still awake. Wrapping things up, getting this blog up, but still awake. I still have to get my customary drink of water, floss and brush my teeth, etc. At midnight.
Connection!
The COVID-19 pandemic was (and still is) a human tragedy on a global scale. But ecologists utilized it as an unparalleled opportunity to study the natural world and what happens there when humans abruptly step back from it.
“Anthropause,” they call it, the slowdown of human activity affecting the environment. 4–5 billion people, or 57 percent of the planet, were under some sort of movement restriction. Indeed, even driving decreased by more than 40 percent, while
Bling!
The other Sunday a strange thing happened. A pastor was robbed at gunpoint during a live-streamed service, as he was preaching.
Now I’ve always suspected that preaching was dangerous business, but I had not realized it was that fraught with peril.
But the strange thing was this: thieves reportedly nabbed over US$1 million in jewelry just from him and his wife! Now that.is.STRANGE!
Lamor Miller-Whitehead, 44, founder and pastor of Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries
Blessedness!
Decades ago, the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) proclaimed that many were “wrecked by success,” in his essay, “Some Character-Types Met With in Psycho-Analytic Work”:
Psychoanalytic work has furnished us with the thesis that people fall ill of a neurosis as a result of frustration. What is meant is the frustration of the satisfaction of their libidinal wishes. … People occasionally fall ill precisely when a deeply-rooted and long-cherished
Atheism!
Gallup’s May 2–22, 2022 Values and Beliefs poll discovered that 17% of Americans do not believe in God.
The good news is that the vast majority of US adults do believe in God, but that percentage, 81%, has slid 6 percentage points down from 2017’s 87%. And it is the lowest it has ever been. In fact, between 1944 and 2011, more than 90% of Americans held to the existence of God.
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
Psalm 14:1
Results were based on
Fiction?
Akihiko Kondo, 38, is married to a fictional character, Hastsune Miku, a blue-haired, computer-created pop singer who has toured with Lady Gaga and starred in video games.
Otherwise, the guy is normal: pleasant, has friends, a steady job, wears a suit and tie to work, etc.
He ain’t the only one. Kondo is one of thousands of Japanese who have entered into unofficial marriages to fictional characters (from anime, manga, and video games) in recent decades.
Mr. Kondo has long
Longevity!
It was Bobby McFerrin who put out “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” in 1988, the first a cappella song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Turns out, McFerrin may have been on to something.
Researchers seem to think so. Two sets of them. In the last four months. From either side of the R. Charles in ye olde city of Boston. One dealing with women, the other with men. “Optimism, Lifestyle, and Longevity in a Racially Diverse Cohort of Women,” in the Journal
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.