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!
Presence?
Last year, Saddleback Church (“One family, many locations”) in Southern California introduced online communion!
Here are their directions.
1. Purchase Grape Juice (quantity depends on size of your group)
2. Purchase Bread or Baked Crackers
3. Be Ready at Home with Your Elements
The teaching pastor will direct you through properly receiving communion. All you need to do is follow along online individually, as a group.
4. Share With Us
After
Walking!
Think your creativity has abandoned you? Can’t come up with a catchy idea for a sales slogan (or a sermon application, preachers)? Stuck on how to begin an essay? No way out of the mundane thoughts crowding your brain?
Well there is a solution: take a walk! (But not too long, lest your attempt to jumpstart creativity turn into an excuse for procrastination.)
Researchers at Stanford University recently published a paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Company!
Apparently you don’t need human company any more. Or even a pet. Now we have a drone to go jogging with!
In last month’s CHI (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Seoul, researchers shared the latest in human interaction with digital technologies. Computer science, cognitive psychology, design, social science, anthropology, artificial intelligence, etc., were some of the fields represented. This year’s conference theme was “Crossings,” described by the CHI
Calm!
A group of scientists from the University of California, Davis, and from University of California, San Francisco, suspect that they’ve found a way to quiet stress signals in the brain.
Eat sugar!
(Of course, I knew that all along, and agree heartily, particularly when aforementioned sugar is found in the species of health food called cheesecake! In fact, I’m pretty stressed out right now. Hmmm ….)
These folks conclude that because of this property of sugar, one can
Water!
You can be drunk when you haven’t drunk!
In recent article in Physiology & Behavior, titled “Mild Hypohydration Increases the Frequency of Driver Errors during a Prolonged, Monotonous Driving Task,” researchers from Loughborough University in Leicestershire, showed that even mildly dehydrated drivers make more than twice as many mistakes as those adequately hydrated. And the number of mistakes was equivalent those who were driving after consuming alcohol.
In other
Longevity!
In 1985, Richard Bass of the US, at the age of 55, climbed Mt. Everest, making him the first to conquer all the world’s highest mountains on all seven continents and the oldest to get atop Everest. But in 2013, Yuichiro Miura of Japan reached the summit of Mt. Everest at the age of 80. And Takao Arayama of Tanzania climbed all seven mountains at 74 (completing the series in 2010).
What exactly does it mean to get “old”? Chronological age? Forgetfulness?
The characteristics
Worms!
The other day something strange happened in Southern Norway.
It began raining earthworms—yes, you read that right: earthworms. Of the creepy, crawly, squirmy, slimy kind. Belonging to the Phylum Annelida.
Biology teacher Karstein Erstad was skiing in the mountains when he discovered thousands of earthworms on the surface of several feet of snow.
When I found them on the snow they seemed to be dead, but when I put them in my hand I found that they were alive.”
Live earthworms!
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. 