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!
Immunized?
The other day, the German news agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), reported on a strange item.
On Sunday, the country’s disease control agency reported 74,053 new COVID-19 infections, less than from a week ago, when the Robert Koch Institute registered 11,224 daily infections. Experts think the most recent surge of infections in Germany—triggered by the BA.2 omicron subvariant—have peaked. With the fall of infection rates, many measures to reign in the pandemic
Nostalgia!
Are you suffering from general aches and pains? Stressed? Grieved?
There is a solution to all your woes: get nostalgic!
Chinese scientists say that taking a break to stroll down memory lane really does relieve those pangs, pins, and pinches. So say they, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in “Thalamocortical Mechanisms for Nostalgia-Induced Analgesia,” published recently in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Apparently what happens is that feeling nostalgic makes you overcome
Zzzzz!
Yup, that’s all you need to do. Get some zzzzz’s and you lose weight! Dozing to be fit. My kinda health strategy!
Anyway, what I’d suspected to be true all along has now formally be proven by scientists at The University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin–Madison in “Effect of Sleep Extension on Objectively Assessed Energy Intake Among Adults With Overweight in Real-life Settings: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” published in the prestigious Journal of
Hands!
Deaths from unintentional injuries are the seventh leading cause of death among older adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control, falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults age 65 and older, and the age-adjusted fall death rate is increasing: it went up 30% in the last ten years, to about 604 deaths per 100,000 older adults (that’s about 29,700 adults in the US dying in the last year for which we have numbers).
Apparently one in four U.S.
Bowels!
The gut is the unsung hero of our bodies. It regulates digestion, but that’s not all it does, apparently. Your mental health and personality, it appears, can be affected by your gut. Because, we are not alone. That is to say, there are a lot of living beings within us, in our guts.
[I know you’re probably thinking I’m going to talk about the indwelling of God the Spirit, but, nope, I’m not.]
I’m talking about the trillions (yes, 1,000,000,000,000s) of little beasts
Pacifier!
Shiri Melumad is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This researcher has done a lot of work on smartphones and our relationship with that ubiquitous, ever-present device.
Said Melumad, of her own experience:
Just holding it made me feel good. It gave me a sense of ease or calm. It was similar to children who seek out their pacifiers when they are stressed. For many of us, our phone represents an attachment object, much
Future!
Last week we had an unusual date, February 22. The actual date itself was unusual: 2/22/22. And it was a “Twosday,” that fell on a Tuesday!
About this, Barry Markovsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of South Carolina, wrote an article in Conversations.
It’s true the number pattern stands out, impossible to miss. But does it mean anything? Judging by the thousands of commemorative products available for purchase online, it may appear to.
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. 