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!
Guide!
Everybody should have a Jim Klubnik in their lives.
I did. He was my first pastor, in more sense than one. Not only did he serve as the pastor of the church I first attended when I came to the U.S. about thirty years ago, he was, indeed, my first shepherd, leading me to finding my niche in life and ministry.
Jim went to be with the Lord earlier last week.
He was a Dallas Seminary grad, and the first one to get me interested in studying the Bible. He pushed me—against my
Memorial!
To them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial,
And a name better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.
Isaiah 56:5
In the Hebrew, “a memorial and a name” reads yad vashem, literally “a hand and a name.” It indicates a divine intention to establish a means of remembrance for those eunuchs who would, otherwise, have no one to carry their names after their deaths. But the Lord
Inspired!
They think he was high. Stoned. William Shakespeare (1564?–1616).
That’s what they claim in “Shakespeare, Plants, and Chemical Analysis of Early 17th-century Clay ‘Tobacco’ Pipes from Europe,” published recently in the South African Journal of Science, by Francis Thackeray and his cohorts (including a police inspector from a narcotics lab).
Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into Elizabethan England in the days of Shakespeare. However,
Called!
Ten whole years have passed. And quickly at that. I was ordained at Plano Bible Chapel (PBC) on Aug 7, 2005.
[Here’s a piece I wrote for RaMbLeS on my one-year ordination anniversary.]
I am grateful to Pastor Larry of PBC and the rest of the terrific men who sat on my Ordination Committee (pictured here). I am grateful to them and to the church for the faith and trust reposed in me. For that is what is signified in the laying of hands upon the ordinand. An expression
Trees!
It appears, scientists claim, that climbing a tree helps your working memory.
In a recent study in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, researchers from the University of North Florida investigated “proprioceptively dynamic activities,” i.e., behaviors that require one to be keenly aware of the spatial position and location of one’s different body parts, so that the action can be carefully coordinated. It seems that such activities improve one’s working
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
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.