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!
Faces!
If you commit a crime, don’t leave your DNA behind.
That’s the word from PLOS Genetics that recently published “Modeling 3D Facial Shape from DNA,” by a group of researchers from Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Brazil, Australia, and the US.
Said the authors:
The face is perhaps the most inherently fascinating and aesthetic feature of the human body. It is a principle subject of art throughout human history and across cultures and populations. It provides the most significant
Imitation!
The other day, a guy got arrested for—get this!—“impersonating Jesus Christ.”
Ilya Novikov, 23, an artist and a filmmaker, was behind the stunt in Perm (Central Russia, near the Ural Mountains).
A video made by an eyewitness showed the bearded Novikov in long, flowing white robes, making his way down the road carrying a huge T-shaped wooden cross on his back. Motorists and pedestrians screamed insults at the Jesus-impersonator. The police was summoned, fearing Novikov
Authentic?
Sean Connery is best known for portraying 007, in seven James Bond movies. He has won an Academy Award, three Golden Globes, the Lifetime Acheivement Award from the American Film Institute, he’s been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and was voted by People magazine as the Sexiest Man of the Century, when he was 69 years old! [There’s hope for us old people!]
Several years ago, when he was 62, before he retired at 76 (and he’s now 85), Connery was asked in an interview
Hypertension?
The verdict is in. There is another way to lower your blood pressure. And not with drugs.
Mozart! Yup, Mozart.
Hans-Joachim Trappe and Gabriele Voit of Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, said so last month, in “The Cardiovascular Effect of Musical Genres: A Randomized Controlled Study on the Effect of Compositions by W. A. Mozart, J. Strauss, and ABBA” (yes, and ABBA!), published in Deutsches Arzteblatt International.
Relaxing to a soothing symphony by aforementioned
Church?
The First Cannabis Church of Logic and Reason. Yup! You read it right. In south Lansing, Michigan. With a website cannabisismyreligion.org.
The news article called them “a parish of pot supporters,” and “marijuana missionaries.”
The “Reverend Jeremy Hall” is in charge and hopes his new “church” plant will become monthly meetings worshipping cannabis and its spiritual properties.
The biggest question that I get is, how can this be a church if we don’t subscribe
Stuff!
They say there are 78,000,000 pet dogs in the U.S. About 40% of all U.S. households have a canine.
Add to this the fact that there are over 200,000,000 smartphone users in this country.
Plus, in the last year there have been 30,000,000,000 apps downloaded, just from Apple’s App Store alone.
When you mix all that data together, churn it around a bit, what do you get?
This!
“Pooper,” an app. It summons someone to scoop off your pet pooch’s droppings from wherever. Yup,
Temple!
That was my breakfast view in Athens a couple of months ago: the Acropolis, a rocky outcrop overlooking the city and bearing several ancient temples—the Parthenon (on the left) and the Erechtheion (on the right).
Appropriately built on the highest point of the capital (Ἀκρόπολις, Acropolis, from ἄκρον, akron = “extremity”; and from πόλις, polis = “city”), such temples, found upon “acropolis-es” in many other Greek cities
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. 