by Barry Creamer | Feb 2, 2022 | Devotionals
In the wilderness we struggle, wandering. A-sea, we drift in the deep’s mystery. In darkness, we fear and seek. A ravine’s walls hem us in. The woods threaten. Away is longing. Strangers menace. Imprisoned, we are bound, stripped of all we intended. At the center we...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 26, 2022 | Devotionals
I do not set an alarm. If my bio-clock has not stirred me by 5:00, my canine’s clock will. When I cycle to work, the commute is 9.85 miles. If I ride, say, 15 miles on a weekend jaunt (cyclists: please refrain from expressing your thoughts; I know my rides are...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 19, 2022 | Devotionals
When one of my kids’ images appears on screen, I pick up the phone. It is my oldest daughter, so I playfully taunt her with a nickname she prefers not. Somberly, she declares that she and our granddaughter are on the side of the road with a flat, three hours into the...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 12, 2022 | Devotionals
Squirrels are interchangeable. To see one nervous, darting, fluff-tail-balanced, imperious nut-nibbling imp-rodent is to see them all. In Matthew’s account, Jesus laments for Jerusalem en masse, a city he wills to protect as a hen would her chicks, because he sees...
by Barry Creamer | Jan 5, 2022 | Devotionals
Finding our seats in the auditorium for one of those rare-enough-to-be-special but repeated-enough-to-be-mundane assemblies recognizing the end or beginning of a year or grade, my high school classmate whispered his disaffected disapproval. “Why?” I asked. “Because...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 29, 2021 | Devotionals
I have been in the circle when it happens. A voice offers and sustains a sound; another adds a variant, a different pitch, a different timbre; then another, and so forth. But then, everyone already accounted, the sounds swell and coalesce into something beyond all the...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 22, 2021 | Devotionals
Long ago in a faraway land there lived a people whom God freed from bondage to an evil king in Egypt, whom he led and fed with fire and bread from heaven, and whom he claimed as his own. One of them received all of these things from God freely, and yet—having entered...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 15, 2021 | Devotionals
Sunshine illuminates blue skies, inviting bright demeanors, optimistic outlooks, an end to sorrow. Yet in the 19th Psalm the heat of sunshine stands in for the general revelation of God’s judgment, from which everyone wishes to hide. Rain falls from dreary or hostile...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 8, 2021 | Devotionals
As a native Texan, I feel at home from Texarkana to El Paso, from South Padre to Canadian, from Big Thicket to Big Bend. When I tell people about sandstorms and rattlesnakes in Crane, or free August Rangers games in Arlington, they know I’m from here. Yet even after...
by Barry Creamer | Dec 1, 2021 | Devotionals
In stark contrast to the pep rally and music, the quick, crisp, intersecting parabolas with which our junior high band director’s baton marks a 3-something time signature has my full attention. Rather than carving smooth arcs in the air, the white baton leaves a...
