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!
Wandering?
Several years ago, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, wrote an article in Science: “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind.”
Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all.”
This is actually a remarkable achievement, perhaps unique to humans: they can learn, they can reason,
Relocation!
A moving story (in more ways than one!).
After thirty-six years of sanity (with some lack of lucidity in between: three years in Massachusetts, and two in the U.K.), I’m losing my senses: I am leaving Texas. Today. August 1, 2021.
Here’s the news:
As of July 1, 2021, I have been on the faculty at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to teach preaching in the Fall. After almost a decade-and-a-half teaching at Dallas Theological Seminary, I’m uprooting and moving,
Alive?
Samantha Dressig has a major problem. She’s dead. At least that’s what the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)says.
At the bright age of 25, Ms. Dressig, a summer camp counselor, is full of energy and she has the right perspective on things.
Life is short. You never know when it’s gonna end.”
True, but when it is the IRS that says when and not your doctor or undertaker, that can be problematic.
The unfortunate mix-up began with her mother’s death, and seven years later
Surveillance!
The other day the byline of an online news article caught my attention:
Clerks at 7-Eleven and other convenience stores are being constantly monitored by a voice of god that can intervene from thousands of miles away.”
The article proceeded to describe how, in a short CCTV video, a clerk at a small convenience store can be seen taking a bottle of coffee from a cooler and drinking it. When he returns to the cash register, an unseen person’s voice emits from a speaker
Leaders?
The other day there was a most unfortunate occurrence in Athens, Greece.
A Greek Orthodox priest had been formally defrocked and removed from the clergy for alleged misconduct by his superiors a group of bishops. The 37-year-old responded by throwing acid at those elders, injuring seven of them and three others in attendance (one a police officer)—all hospitalized with burns, two seriously.
Photographs of the scene of the attack in central Athens showed bloodstains and
Know?
A recent survey conducted by OnePoll and commissioned by Charmin, they of the rear-end-wipes fame (and I have no idea why they did so), produced some interesting findings.
64 percent of Americans feel pretty confident about the locations of their country’s natural landmarks.
But only 51 percent knew that the Redwood Forest was in California. Only 38 percent knew that the Grand Canyon was in Arizona (20 percent answered Colorado).
Oh, and 22 percent of Americans think that
Nuts?
The other day, there was an unusual heist. Touchstone Pistachio Company, in the San Joaquin Valley, discovered during a routine audit that something wasn’t adding up.
More than 42,000 pounds of pistachios had vanished.
Later, the sheriff’s office in Tulare County, CA, said they found the missing nuts and arrested the thief. Alberto Montemayor, 34, was hiding the pistachios in a tractor trailer parked in a nearby parking lot and then repackaging them to sell.
This is just
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. 