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!
End?
A strange entertainment, indeed. “The Cremator” is a bizarre “death simulator” in “Window of the World,” a Chinese amusement park in Shenzen.
You want a chance to experience cremation? Here’s the opportunity for the morbidly curious.
But, no, you won’t be rendered into ashes here.
First you journey through a morgue. Then they settle you into a temporary coffin that is placed on a conveyor belt. This device will carry the en-coffined you through a chamber filled
Leader?
In 1934, a college questionnaire completed by the parent of an applicant, Sara Pollard, to Vassar University described his daughter as “a follower than a leader.”
Guess what? Vassar admitted this young lady, explaining that the school “had enough leaders.”
Imagine that! A college accepting a self-confessed “follower.” Were they crazy, or what?
Everyone wants leaders. And everyone wants to be a leader.
Harvard’s goal: “to educate our students to be citizens
Watched!
Apparently, until quite recently, the facilities of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, an imperial complex of religious buildings constructed in the early 1400s, carried toilet paper. Sadly, thieves began ruining things for everyone. The Beijing Evening News showed TP pilferers making off with rolls of the white stuff in backpacks.
Posters and broadcast messages on public announcement systems exhorting visitors to use less paper have been of no avail. TP keeps disappearing!
Finally,
Opinion!
The Mayo Clinic, based in Rochester, Minnesota, is a well-known non-profit medical practice and research group, employing over four thousand physicians and over fifty thousand allied healthcare personnel. One of the premier institutions in the world of its kind, it attracts many patients who come to Mayo for a second opinion or the confirmation of a diagnosis made elsewhere of a complex condition. Sometimes other doctors send them to Mayo for a consult; at other times,
Dirty!
You got mud on your jeans? Don’t wash it off. It might be worth a lot more now.
[No, I’m not kidding!]
Nordstrom sells them for $425 a pair! Shipped with the mud baked in.
Here’s Nordstrom’s description:
Heavily distressed medium-blue denim jeans in a comfortable straight-leg fit embody rugged, Americana workwear that’s seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.”
They’re
Pacers!
Last week, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge came 25 seconds close to breaking a record. Running a marathon in less than two hours. Then guy ran 26.2 miles in 2:25:00 beating the record of 2:02:57 set by Dennis Kimetto (another Kenyan), as well as his own best of 2:03:05. Like Roger Bannister’s breaking the four-minute mile in 1954 (he did it in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds), this one by Kipchoge raises hopes that one of the sporting world’s most formidable (and famous) barriers may
Honesty!
You have to admit that we live in a world filled with lies, deceit, and fraud, engaged in by humanity at every level: from the princes to the paupers.
Is there any incentive, though, to be honest? There is!
“Moral Transgressions Corrupt Neural Representations of Value,” say researchers from Oxford and Yale, in a paper published in Nature Neuroscience.
It appears that there is a simple reason to be honest: we feel better about it. Decency trumps deception at a very physical
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. 