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!
Call!
Trust a Texas mom to take action. Sharon Standifird, of Houston, and a military vet, was, like any concerned mother, mad.
Once again, she called. No reply. And again, she texted. No reply.
Her teenager, Bradley, was not answering her calls or texts.
She was mad!
(Not unusual. There are a lot of mad parents out there, I’m told, who are in the same predicament, stuck with unresponsive teenagers.)
So she got to work. Seriously. Said Standifird:
We need to develop an app that
Vibration!
Apparently seeing is hearing!
All you need is a bag of potato chips, preferably empty in your room. Someone can hear you, just by looking at said bag of said sliced and fried goods.
Well, not exactly. But researchers at MIT came close.
You see, sound is a mechanical wave that results from back and forth vibrations of the media through which it moves (air, water, etc.), creating compressions and rarefactions, like ripples in water when you drop a pebble. And when these c’s
Solitude!
Everyone says they crave a moment of solitude. “Leave me alone,” they beseech.
But a study by researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard showed, in findings published in Science, that if you do leave them alone, they don’t like it.
One scientist commented:
I was surprised that people find themselves such bad company. It seems that the average person doesn’t seem to be capable of generating a sufficiently interesting train of thought to prevent them from
Smarter?
Apparently the average American thinks he or she is more intelligent than the average American!
Here are the stats from a new survey by YouGov, a research group that conducts online polls.
Compared to the “average American” …
19% think they are “much more intelligent”
36% think they are “slightly more intelligent”
Fallen!
The Fuente del Ángel Caído (Fountain of the Fallen Angel) stands in a section of Retiro Park in Madrid. It is a monument to … Satan! In a Catholic country!
Created by Ricardo Bellver in 1873, it was bought by Spain and installed in Retiro Park. The pedestal of the statue was designed by Francisco Jareño, who created an octagonal structure with devils on every side chomping vermin and spouting water at the same time. The whole structure, about 20 feet high, is in the
Aqueduct!
Segovia is an ancient city, lying about 60 miles Northeast of Madrid. A great place to wander around and take in a fantastic 10th-century castle (the Alcazar of Segovia) and a grand 15th century Gothic cathedral.
But also fascinating is the Aqueduct of Segovia, a defining feature of the city, that shows up on Segovia’s coat of arms.
It is perhaps the most important Roman civil engineering work in the Iberian peninsula—in fact, one of the best-preserved monuments in Spain.
Land!
Wrote Ogden Nash (1902–1971), the American poet, thus,
In a poem that he titled “Columbus”:
Once upon a time there was an Italian,
And some people thought he was a rapscallion,
But he wasn’t offended,
Because other people thought he was splendid,
And he said the world was round,
And everybody made an uncomplimentary sound.
…
So Columbus said, Somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it,
And
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. 