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!
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
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,
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.