Breakfast by the Sea

by   September 16, 2026 with No Comments

By Lynna Clark

What’s your default setting? Where do you go when nothing makes sense? Do you have a happy place that re-boots your psyche? Christianese would say, “Run to Jesus.” So how do you do that when the bills pile up, the pain is great and prayers seem to go unanswered?

A good friend of mine who struggles with depression will watch a funny movie. Another friend finds great solace in his deer stand. He can sit in the forest on a cold, frosty morning for hours. David will take a long ride on his motorcycle through the quiet countryside. He calls it therapy. Me? Take me to the beach. Give me a day watching the waves and suddenly I’m good for another couple months.

The sweetest story is recorded in the last chapter of John. Seven guys were together after witnessing the horrible death of their friend. Even though they had seen Him alive, and realized that God had raised Him from the dead, their future was very uncertain. Unmet expectations, fear of the unknown and the lingering question of “What now?” made way for hurt and doubt.

Peter reveals his default setting with “I’m going fishing.”

His friends joined him. But after fishing all night their nets were as empty as their souls. With dawn breaking a stranger called out to them the ageless question.

“Catching anything?”

“We’ve got nothing,” was their reply.

“Throw your nets on the other side,” came the familiar suggestion.

With nets suddenly full, memories of provision and care filled their weary souls. Once they hauled in the bounty, they made their way to the shore where Jesus was waiting. There He had a hot breakfast ready for them. Can He get any sweeter?

Here is the Lord of glory, Who has just conquered death, Who understands their fear and emptiness, cooking breakfast on the sea shore for His weary friends.

He’s kind like that. It wasn’t enough to call out a greeting; or to fill their boat with fish; or even just appear to them again in order to let them know everything would be okay. Nope. He cooked breakfast.

That is a picture of our Savior: Grace heaped upon grace.

Just when we cannot take another thing, He sends what we need to fill our empty souls.

Hold on my friend. He will be calling to you shortly. Don’t feel bad if you have to look to Him and reply, “I’ve got nothing.” He already knows. He’s cooking up something special that will be just what you need.

25 Years Later

by   September 13, 2026 with No Comments

By Ashlie Miller

Twenty-five years. 9/11 has literally been a lifetime for some who are too young to remember. It continues to affect the lives of many survivors; many are still losing loved ones or coworkers to delayed-onset illnesses or cancers.

Like you, I remember where I was as I watched the tragic events unfold on live TV. I was not supposed to be home that late in the morning; however, a rough evening the night before delayed my getting started. I actually can remember 9/10 because of what happened on 9/11. The details are unnecessary, but a personal crisis on 9/10 rocked my little 24-year-old world. I thought I was losing control of all that was within my grasp. My own security and structure. My plans. Was my world slipping away from me?

I woke up the next day to see what everyone else saw. Yes, the world everyone shared was still there, yet it didn’t seem like it would stay that way. Was the world slipping away from us? Were our eyes and hearts meant to take in all that we were seeing in real time?

The weeks following were filled with many emotions. After the uncertainty of “what is actually unfolding?”, the feelings of confusion, anger, sadness, and even despair, many Americans had strong resolve – to keep the enemy from destroying our way of life and live it as it should be lived, with rhythms of normalcy and even laughter. Americans putting their own lives at risk, helping strangers, rallying communities, and later sharing healing laughter showed me what resilience can look like.

While we as a nation were figuring out how to survive what would surely defeat our morale, I was also learning to move past a major trial as a young adult who had not yet experienced that personal level of seeming despair. Watching the towers fall challenged and changed what I would consider a crisis. No, God did not take away the things that threatened my security in that moment. Rather, He began to teach me where my security really was: He was my security. My soul was still secure. I could weather any storm with Him, because of Him. The odds before me were not insurmountable. God used 9/10 and 9/11 to teach me to lean in – closer to both Jesus and my husband; everything else was too shaky.

God taught me that my systems of supposed security did not have to be in place for me to be ok. Once my personal neediness was fully exposed and submitted to God, there was not much left to hide. I could be honest about my feelings of despair and frustration, and like a child, expect Him lovingly to carry me through – no one else could. September 11 showed us that survival still has many more stories beyond the pain, and twenty-five years have provided a long season to foster growth, dependence, and trust.

Looking back, I can see that insurmountable odds also exposed how deeply I needed to fully trust my loving Father more than having everything securely in place myself. In 25 years, I’ve still been learning the lesson. Our world may shake tomorrow, or maybe just my own little world. But the psalmist reminds us (see Psalm 46) that God is our refuge and strength.

Hard Prayers

by   September 12, 2026 with No Comments

By Doug Creamer

Hard Prayers

            Have you ever prayed and felt like God wasn’t listening? Maybe you felt like your prayers were just hitting the ceiling and bouncing back down. I think we get this feeling because it seems like nothing is happening. We pray and we pray but there are no results…that we can see. We ask God, we beg God…but there is no answer. How do we move forward on other things that need prayers when we feel like this one important thing to us hasn’t received any action from heaven?

            Unanswered prayers give birth to doubt. Struggle. Sometimes God feels so close we imagine we can touch Him. Then there seems to be those times when we feel lost in a desert wandering around looking for Him. Do you even hear me, God? How long, Lord, will you leave me alone? Don’t you care that I am hurting?

            King David, a man after God’s heart, felt this way. We hear David’s cry to God in Psalm 13, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” That sounds pretty desperate. We don’t know what drove David to write such words but we can hear the pain in his voice. In a way, David helps us to know it’s okay to express our laments to God.

            In the first two verses of Psalm 13 David offers his complaints or laments to God. In the second two verses David lays out his petitions to God. In the final two verses there is a transformation that occurs. David reminds himself of God’s great love. How could someone who loves us so much that He gave His Son to die for us ever leave or forsake us? We need to remember that in those dark moments. We need to remember all the ways God has come through for us in the past and know that He will not leave us in our present circumstances. He WILL come through for us. He has not forgotten. His love will sustain us.

            The next thing is truly amazing. David commands His heart to rejoice and praise God. Think about that. David is in a rough place, a place that He just complained to God about a few verses earlier, and now he is commanding his heart to rejoice and praise God. Did David feel like rejoicing? NO! Was his heart in it? Probably not. Imagine Paul and Silas in prison, bound with chains after being beaten. They chose to rejoice and praise God. Then their prison doors were opened and the jailer tended to their wounds. Paul and Silas shared their faith, still in pain from the beating, and they got to see the jailer and his family get born again!

            Paul and Silas learned from David that we have to rejoice and worship God even though our circumstances aren’t fixed. We praise and worship because we trust Him with our circumstances, knowing that He is going to help us work it out. Our family experienced several losses over the last year or so and there were times I didn’t want to worship God. I was hurting inside but I commanded my soul to rejoice and worship anyway. It was hard. I did it with tears. It was a sacrifice of praise. Those are so beautiful to God, when we worship Him even when we don’t understand all that is going on. We trust Him to be at work even when we can’t see Him working.

            Does that mean the pain goes away? That the suffering ends? That healing is given? That deliverance has come? NO! It means that we trust Him even when, especially when, we don’t understand what is happening. When it looks like things are out of control we have to run to Him and cling to Him and have faith that He will work everything out for our good. It doesn’t look possible with the mess before us, but He is the God of the impossible!

            I want to encourage you to pray…especially when it feels hard. God hears every prayer! Nothing has escaped God’s attention. God is working even if we can’t see Him working. God knows what you need. Maybe it feels like He is testing you, but that is only because He wants to draw you closer. He wants you to learn that He is your provider, your healer, your deliverer, and your friend. He is your comforter through your pain. He doesn’t promise you will understand but He promises never to leave you. He is a good, good Father who has incredible plans for your life here and with Him in heaven.  

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com

Duel Citizenship

by   September 11, 2026 with No Comments

By Roger Barbee

David McCullough’s The American Spirit is a timely read. A 2017 collection of fifteen of his speeches covering several years and settings, it is timely because its sub-title, Who We Are and What We Stand For is a reminder that 2022 is a good time to re-examine our character.

The selected speeches scan from 1989 to 2016 and were delivered at the White House and the United States Capitol and Monticello and other such settings, but, as fitting for a scholar like McCullough, most were shared at colleges and universities. As expected, each speech gave some history of the occasion, information about some of the people behind the occasion, and as he writes in the introduction, he always came away from each speaking date “with my outlook greatly restored, having seen, again and again, long-standing American values still firmly in place, good people involved in joint efforts to accomplish changes for the better, the American spirit still at work.” But, best of all, he gives a lesson or lessons in each speech.

 At Hillsdale College in 2005, for instance, he quotes Daniel Boorstin, Barbara Tuchman, E.M. Forster,  John and Abigail Adams, and speaks of such Signers as Benjamin Rush. Not surprisingly, all of his words are spoken from his love and appreciation of our history, which he implores us to learn. He shares how his friend Daniel Boorstin thought that “trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers”,  and he cautions us that, “Citizenship isn’t just voting.” And he shows us how to be more than just voting citizens.

“Read. Read, read!” A command from a fellow citizen who knows the necessity of being informed.

Now, I am sure that when McCullough delivered these speeches he was thinking of our secular citizenship and the debt we owe our country. He is correct that a good citizen does more than vote in every election cycle. A good citizen reads and studies and thinks of history and the events and people who came before. And a good citizen understands that those folks were like us-fallible humans.

But McCullough’s words are applicable to another citizenship role in many of our lives—the role of citizenship in Christ. Just as we are told to read our secular history, we need to read and study not only the Bible but other sources concerning Christianity.  Read the histories of Jesus’ world and better understand the forces He encountered. Read modern day Christian writers such as Clarence Jordan, Howard Thurman, C.S. Lewis, Samuel Wells, A.W. Tozer, or any number of the good writers available. Their words are reminders of how a Christian life should be lived, and when attending Sunday service do not act and think like the secular voter McCullough warns us against who believes that showing up is all that is required.

McCullough tells us that being a citizen requires more than voting just as Jesus tells us that being a Christ Follower requires more than sitting in a pew on Sunday.  Both citizenships require action: Acts of study, thought, and deeds. Anything short is false.

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