by Barry Creamer | Nov 24, 2021 | Devotionals
They sit in perfectly disarrayed order unused for the moment: bowls with or without legs or pedestal; jars and cups with and without handle; pots, vases, dishes, pitchers. Each is the product of a loved daughter’s hand—testimony to the creativity and artisanship she...
by Barry Creamer | Nov 17, 2021 | Devotionals
Barry and his sister, Michelle, at ages 5 and 8 respectively (6 years before the story below). I am 10 or 11 years old, the only one at home when I hear my teenage sister come through the front door. I am immediately inspired to hide in the clothes hamper. She...
by Barry Creamer | Nov 10, 2021 | Devotionals
A teenager, I notice our midwinter pecan tree’s bare-branched ostensions to the sky. For the first time, I see that its limbs and fingers look like an inverted root structure—as if the whole were extracted then replanted upside-down by a mischievous Olympian (perhaps...
by Barry Creamer | Nov 3, 2021 | Devotionals
Fifteen minutes before midnight my eyes open without a prompt, but bleary. I don what I laid out before my nap, hoping the layers will be enough for a clear night dipping into the 40s. Within 10 minutes my truck is carrying me, my preloaded telescope and camera...
by Barry Creamer | Oct 27, 2021 | Devotionals
Dense vegetation lining the creek bed across the street from my home houses ants, rats, opossums, squirrels, raccoons, hawks, owls, bees, and an uncatalogued menagerie of other species, all sallying into the neighborhood occasionally, just as the undergrowth itself...
by Barry Creamer | Oct 13, 2021 | Devotionals
When I lived in Waco—newly married, fledging a church, attending college—there were not uncommon occasions for purchasing a few donuts from HEB, the grocery store. In that day still a consumer of donuts, I preferred sourdough. However, most of the kids our car...
by Barry Creamer | Oct 6, 2021 | Devotionals
Signs engineered to maximize visibility emerge only after their usefulness has disappeared. Beyond them, the dim outlines of buildings and trees dissipate with distance. Fog shrouds the entirety of the morning’s two hour commute. The deep, broad cloud hugging the...
by Barry Creamer | Sep 29, 2021 | Devotionals
I recently spent 2 Sundays at East Paris Baptist Church, in Paris. You know, Texas. One of the themes emerging from the texts of my 4 sermons there is that God’s mercy in this world is coextensive with His sovereignty. It’s an important idea in Scripture, and it can...
by Barry Creamer | Sep 22, 2021 | Devotionals
(Caveat: this memo contains petty complaints.) Much of Saturday was occupied by replacing a broken washing machine and clearing a clogged drain in my kitchen. Admittedly, the washing machine was just an expense: my wife found and bought it, and a very nice young man...
by Barry Creamer | Sep 15, 2021 | Devotionals
Our frailty Shortly after 9/11, a few of us finally return to the racquetball club for a pre-dawn workout. We pause in the foyer first to watch and listen as a news commentator reads the names and circumstances of some missing and known victims: we all know it is...
