by Barry Creamer | Apr 17, 2024 | Devotionals
When the rain finally relented after a wet spell not too long ago, I spent a late night trying to get a good picture of Saturn. I didn’t. Instead I got an image slightly distorted and softened by atmospheric turbulence and my own processing imperfections. While...
by Barry Creamer | Apr 10, 2024 | Devotionals
About 30 years ago a young adult in the church I pastored commented to some friends that I could be the brother of… (It was obvious the sentence would conclude with a celebrity reference, so I thought, “well, I part my hair like him, and we’re about the same age, so...
by Barry Creamer | Apr 3, 2024 | Devotionals
A 17 year old high school senior, the day after my partner and I won the tournament for the largest debate camp in the country, I woke to no fans outside my bedroom window, no keys to the city, not even a mention in our ultra-local newspaper. Although the world had...
by Barry Creamer | Mar 27, 2024 | Devotionals
John taught his disciples to pray and fast, yearning for a deliverance which had been hiding for centuries just beyond the horizon. This is why Jesus contrasts John’s fasting disciples with his own: “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”...
by Barry Creamer | Mar 13, 2024 | Devotionals
It is a chilly Monday morning and I stand with hundreds of others waiting for the busses we have just seen depart to return so they can also shuttle us from a parking lot near the finish line of this MLK Day parade to our designated location near its starting point. A...
by Barry Creamer | Mar 6, 2024 | Devotionals
The sun is setting behind a ridge across the lake when I notice a couple of things simultaneously. First, insects are not bothering me. I have watched and photographed the sunset for about 20 minutes and have not experienced a single buzz or bite—a stark contrast...
by Barry Creamer | Feb 28, 2024 | Devotionals
“I could use some help,” I say to the nurse at a retreat center where kids from my church are in camp. “My thumb has been sore for a while and isn’t getting better.” A couple of months prior (when I was young and volleyball nets were much lower) I dislocated my thumb...
by Barry Creamer | Feb 21, 2024 | Devotionals
“Against you, you only, have I sinned…” (Psalm 51:4). The omission of that statement is as culpable as the person who expresses it “when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba” (Psalm 51: superscript). The acts amalgamated into this sin are...
by Barry Creamer | Feb 14, 2024 | Devotionals
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulder in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they...
by Barry Creamer | Feb 7, 2024 | Devotionals
Almost everyone is familiar with the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Da da da dum; da da da dum. The motif is now ubiquitous. Some riffs, rhythms, and even lyrics ensconce themselves in the mind so tenaciously it is hard to imagine a world without them:...
