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!
Height!
The Nepalese call it Sagarmatha, “Peak of Heaven.” The Tibetans, Chomolungma, “Mother Goddess of the World.” Most others call it “Everest,” after Sir George Everest, the British Surveyor General of India in the mid 1800s. Though it was an Indian mathematician and surveyor, Radhanath Sikdar, who was first to discover it was the highest mountain in the world, at 29,029 feet.
Said Roxanne Vogel, 35, one of the more recent of Everest’s conquerors:
That’s
Millionaire?
Josua Hutagalung, 33, is a coffin maker in Kolang, North Sumatra, Indonesia.
One day in August he had a scare and a very pleasant surprise. He said:
I was working on a coffin near the street in front of my house when I heard a booming sound that made my house shake. It was as if a tree had fallen on us.”
It was no tree. It was a football-sized meteorite. Smashing through the veranda at the edge of his living room.
It was too hot to pick up so my wife dug it out with a hoe
Wordless!
Links:
Funeral
Funeral program
Thanks to all the kind words expressed below and through other means. They are much appreciated and greatly comforting.
We …
… do not grieve,
as do the rest who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again,
even so God will bring with Him
those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.
Therefore comfort one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:13–14, 18
Satisfaction!
This may not be much of a surprise, but more Americans are dissatisfied with life in general than at any time in the last five decades! So said the COVID Response Tracking Study a few months ago, conducted by the University of Chicago: only 14 percent of Americans say they’re very happy, down from 31 percent who in 2018.
The public is less optimistic today about the standard of living improving for the next generation than it has been in the past 25 years. What with shutdowns
Wishes?
Dr. Laeek Khan got taken the other day. The good doctor had recently got back to India from London, and while in Meerut, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, he was approached by a couple of guys. They claimed to be tantriks (sorcerers) and said they had the Aladdin ka chirag (Aladdin’s lamp) for sale. For only $250,000. Only!
BTW, Aladdin’s tale is ATU 561. That is, #561 of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther catalogue of folktales, an essential tool for folklorists,
Bootstraps?
Another strange thing happened the other day.
In Littleton, NH (pop. 5, 928). Lisa Landon, 33, was one with well-known criminal tendencies. Stalking, possession of methamphetamine, etc., are the charges filed against her.
Well, she decided to take matters into her own hands for these pending cases.
Ms. Landon used the New Hampshire court system’s electronic system to file bogus documents, pretending to be a county prosecutor herself. And those documents declared that the
Junk!
Have you ever snuck into your kitchen for a late night snack attack? In fact, you don’t even turn the lights on: you know exactly where all the tasty stuff is located. You could do it asleep (and some of us do). It is the hunt, the pursuit, the chase.
Well, now we know why. Researchers from the Division of Human Nutrition and Health at Wageningen University in the Netherlands discovered that this isn’t at all about your sharp memory. Rather, your brain is actually hardwired
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. 