Today's Readings: Psalm 119:97-20, 81,82, Jeremiah 8:18-9:6, Romans 5:1-11, John 8:12-20
"Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?"
I was first haunted by these words when I heard them sung in a church. There is an old spiritual that sings this lament in the positive. "There is a balm, in Gilead, that heals the sin-sick soul". I have always been drawn to the songs sung by slaves. Songs of hope in the midst of hell. Songs of a future while held by chains. Songs of joy while families are ripped apart while pain is imparted by the rod of an evil man. And yet, over all the current hell, those who have found hope sing loud. Now, some of you may think (rightly) that many twisted the Word of God to fill their greedy pockets. True. But the real Jesus, the real Hope is there. This is what my friend Ruben told me once. Ruben is 100% Shinecock Indian and lives on the Res in Southampton. I caught up to him years later when I made a trip back. By them I was a Christian and I knew he was so I had to ask him. "Ruben, how can you look at white Christians knowing what many did to your people in the Name of Jesus?" He looked down at me and smiled a huge grin "Bry- Bry, Jesus is the only good thing the white man ever gave us!"
So there you go. There IS a balm, we just keep it hidden on the shelf. Do we really think He is the balm for everything? Are to telling others where the Balm is?
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That Balm has literally kept me alive. Any insight in to how to tell an 80 year old lady who was followed to church every Sunday of her childhood by her father carrying a belt? Right now I'm doing what St. Francis suggested, preach the gospel always, use words if necessary. She's been hurt in the name of God and other than wanting to know what I'm doing when I say I'm going to church, she really doesn't want to hear about God.
ReplyDeletedon't know the whole story Lynn, but the Parable of the weed and the wheat speaks to this in that somehow, she will be and even feel vindicated at the coming of Jesus. I wonder where she feels God was when she was walking to church? She wonders, and if we are honest we would too, how God could allow her father's sin to hurt her so! This balm does not always heal in this life, but ultimately it will.
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