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!
Life!
Nils. H., 38, is a nurse in Germany (name withheld under that nation’s privacy laws). Hopefully, the verb will be in the past tense: He was a nurse.
The man was arrested the other day and is facing charges in three murders and two attempted murders. He expressed regret for killing 30! And the state prosecutor suspects he could be involved in the deaths of more than 150! All of them his patients! He killed his patients.
He confessed to an Oldenburg regional court that he
Spied!
Spies are having a difficult time these days.
Those cloak-and-dagger days of yesteryear are gone, when one could produce a false passport, slap on a wig, wiggle a false mustache, and slip into a country with panache. No longer.
Said retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, ex-director of the Defense Intelligence Agency:
In the 21st century, you can’t do any of that because of biometrics.”
What with iris scans and facial recognition software, life is tough now for the old school
Vision!
There’s a new Bond movie on the horizon: Spectre. Maybe that’s why “Science for the Masses” announced a recent finding that sounded like it came right out of Q’s lab.
I know nothing about Q’s lab, Fleming’s fictional R&D division of the British Secret Service. Nor do I know anything about “Science for the Masses” that describes itself thus:
Science for the Masses is a research group [operating out of Tehachapi, California] composed of professionals
Beard!
It’s puzzling (to some) that more men are sporting beards these days—“one of the great mysteries of the age,” said one.
Prof. Cyril Grueter and his colleagues at The University of Western Australia in Perth may have found the answer, which they published recently in Evolution and Human Behaviour (“Are Badges of Status Adaptive in Large Complex Primate Groups?”).
Here it is: Men are under pressure from other men and are trying to look aggressive by growing flamboyant
Life!
She celebrated her 104th birthday this week. Elizabeth Sullivan of Fort Worth.
Well at 103 I didn’t think I’d make it, but I’m still perking along.”
And yes, she needs a doctor. Three of them, in fact. But not the kind with MD next to their names. She needs Dr. Pepper!
People try to give me coffee for breakfast. Well, I’d rather have a Dr. Pepper.”
The good lady began imbibing said soft drink about forty years ago. Three a day. Yup, THREE! Three Dr. Peppers every
Stars!
They found dust. Yup, dust! Two billion-plus light years away.
Dust is actually quite important in the formation of the universe—planets and stars. But apparently there wasn’t any in the beginning, at the time of the Big Bang (about 14 billion years ago, they say). The early galaxies had only gas, mostly hydrogen and helium (plus dark matter).
Dust—carbon (fine soot) or silicates (fine sand). When stars get old and die as supernovas, the explosions release cosmic dust.
Better!
I was in the Boston area last week for a series of lectures at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) on the north side of ye olde city.
I know, I know. Boston! This time of the year. Crazy!
It took me about 2 hours to negotiate 30-odd miles from Logan Airport to GCTS the night I arrived.
Exactly 105.5 inches of snow this winter, according to National Weather Service measurements at Logan. Folks, that’s more than 8½ feet of the good bad, white stuff.
But ye olde Bostonians
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. 