Shrinkage!
I don’t know how 2012 has been for you. If you are like most, pretty stressful. Not that 2012 was any different, except for fiscal cliffs, shootings, and presidential elections, murder of a U.S. ambassador, the death of Whitney Houston, a luxury cruise ship running aground in Italy, the Diamond Jubilee of QEII, the monarch, Arab Spring, the Mars landing of Curiosity, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s sound barrier-breaking space dive, Hurricane Sandy,
Peace?
An ancient prophet declared that Jesus Christ was the Prince of Peace.
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6
That’s all well and good; Jesus might have come to bring peace, but not in Bethlehem this year.
Reuters reported the other day about a brawl in one of Christianity’s holiest churches, the
Mark: Introduction
After the series of posts for the last few months on the theology of preaching and what authors do with what they say, I am planning to go through the Gospel of Mark, pericope by pericope, here on the aBeLOG. This will essentially be a distillation of what is in my commentary (Mark: A Theological Commentary for Preachers; more on the book here).
Innocents!
The Drudge Report ran this headline yesterday: “Slaughter of Innocents.” This was, of course, referring to the abominable act of cruelty and madness inflicted upon Newtown, CT, last Friday. Twenty-seven killed, of them twenty children between the ages of 5 and 10. Flags at half-mast in the White House, Capitol, and elsewhere.
At a news conference on Friday, President Barack Obama, his voice cracking at times, reacted as a parent would: “Our hearts are broken today.
Sad!
’Tis the season to spend, spend, and spend.
Just make sure you aren’t feeling sad when you go shopping.
In a joint research study conducted by investigators from Harvard, Columbia, and University of California (Riverside), they have discovered that sadness goes along with foolish financial decisions. Folks feeling miserable are prone to decide to be instantly gratified and go for the offer of less money right now, than to wait for later to make more money.
When caught
Texts and Stained Glass
Biblical authors’ literary products are agenda-driven and discoursed for a purpose, not merely created to convey information. They carefully selected and shaped their material to convey their respective theological agendas (pericopal theology). Think of what authors can do to just one facet of life, time; it is the authors’ prerogative to tweak it any which way they wish: flash forwards, flash backs, summaries, ellipses (gaps in the story), pauses (for explanatory
Bacon!
Candied bacon martini, chocolate-covered bacon (on a stick), oysters wrapped in bacon, bacon sundae, maple bacon doughnut. There is the “bacone” (a bacon cone with scrambled eggs, hash browns, and cheese), there is chicken-fried bacon (here in good ol’ Texas), there is a peanut butter-bacon-banana sandwich, bacon-infused vodka, hard-boiled eggs coated in mayonnaise shrouded in bacon, bacon mints, and every other conceivable form of
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.