Students in middle school who consume sweetened energy drinks are 66 percent more at risk for hyperactivity than other kids. Is anyone shocked by this fact?
What surprises me is that the Yale School of Public Health thought it needed to conduct such a study. Their researchers surveyed 1,649 students in 5th, 7th, and 8th grades, learning about their beverage consumption and assessing their levels of inattention and hyperactivity. Shockingly, they found that "only energy drinks were associated with greater risk of hyperactivity/inattention." Any parent of a middle-school child could have saved Yale the trouble.
In a similar vein, the Technical University of Denmark conducted a study titled, "The Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold." Surprisingly, they discovered that wearing wet underwear in cold weather is not good for us. Aston University in England issued a report published in the European Journal of Physics which discovered that toast tends to fall on the buttered side. And the University of Bristol studied the optimal way to dunk a cookie in coffee.
There's something about us that wants to know what we don't know. (Tweet this)
Consider this report making news today: the Andromeda galaxy is racing toward our Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 250,000 mph (fast enough to circle our planet in six minutes). Do you want to know when we'll collide? Approximately 3.75 billion years. Now consider that the Sun will one day swallow our planet. When will we meet our demise? Not for another five billion years.
Most of us presume Jesus will return before then, and want to know when. When I was a pastor, I discovered that studies of the book of Revelation drew larger crowds than any others. We all want to know how much time we have. But if Jesus didn't know the hour of his return (Matthew 24:36), who of us does?
So many of us ignore the question, or ask others equally unknowable or impractical. Others redeem the time we have. Consider Kayla Mueller, the American whose death while in ISIS captivity is making global headlines. She had been working with Syrian refugees when she was captured in 2013 at the age of 24.
Five years ago she wrote a letter to her father in which she said, "I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I've known for some time what my life's work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering."
After her tragic death, Kayla's aunt said of her, "She has done more in her incredible 26 years than many people can ever imagine doing in their lifetime. Kayla has touched the heart of the world."
Today you can ask unanswerable questions, or answer questions no one is asking. Or you can answer the most practical question of all: what is your life's work?
Publication Date: February 12, 2014
For more from the Denison Forum on Truth and Culture, please visit www.denisonforum.org.
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