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!
Control!
Maybe you’ve had late nights that stretched into early mornings that found you fast asleep during your work hours. Pulling an all-nighter that knocked you out for the rest of the day.
For Philip “P.J.” Maschek it was worse.
This 50-year-old dude was passed out next morning in his chair wearing a black robe and slippers; no shirt (maybe that’s why he’s called “P.J.”?). The police was called.
Why, you ask?
Our man was (yes, was) an air traffic controller
Praying!
That’s me, praying at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The Western Wall is the small portion of the retaining walls of the Temple Mount, where the Jewish Temple stood till it was destroyed in the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E.
After an extensive expansion of the plateau of the Temple Mount in the first century, conducted by Herod the Great, the guy who killed babies at the birth of Jesus (reigned 37–4 B.C.E.), this obsessive builder of edifices
Guts!
Mark Lyte’s lab in Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in Abilene, Texas, is growing stuff from [grossness alert!] monkey feces.
The alimentary canal is an interesting place that plays host to trillions of bugs. The genetic material of all these guests—weighing more than five pounds in an individual!—is called the microbiome, almost an organ in itself.
Lyte:
You wouldn’t believe what we’re extracting out of poop. We found that the guys here in the
Ladder!
For most of May, I was in the Holy Land with a bunch of enterprising students from Dallas Seminary. “Enterprising” because this was a three-week course: Biblical Geography and History. Which meant they had lectures, quizzes, finals. Which meant they had to take notes while sightseeing. Which meant that after grueling days, averaging 5–6 miles a day on foot under the hot sun of the Middle East for three whole weeks, they had to return to their hotels and
Days!
Procrastination, someone once said, has its good side. You have something to do tomorrow.
I kinda like that. Why fill today doing stuff, when I can fill tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after that, and …) doing the same stuff.
In any case, it isn’t kindly looked upon by mothers and managers and ministers. It is proclaimed an evil to be avoided or, at least, conquered.
And beating procrastination may be easier to conquer than you thought, whether it be for sermon
Tenants!
I bought a new home a few weeks ago.
From a colleague of mine from Dallas Seminary, Timothy Warren. (To read his preaching philosophy, go here.) Timothy and his wife weren’t ready to move out just yet; their new place of residence elsewhere had things to be done to it.
So the Warrens became … my tenants. Paying me rent. Well, for a few days.
My association with Timothy goes back almost two decades.It began with him being my teacher. Then I became his friend. Later his
Bride!
The other day a wedding photographer posted a photo on Facebook that he had taken at a recent wedding at which he was the camera guy. The photo went viral!
U.S. Marine Corporal Caleb Earwood was getting married on Saturday a couple of weeks ago, in Asheville, North Carolina. He decided he wanted to pray with his bride Maggie before the ceremony. Of course, it ain’t kosher to see your bride on the day of the wedding before she walks up to you in church. So Caleb and Maggie
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. 