The Song That Answered the Prophet

Jeremiah asked a question born of despair: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" The prophet looked at a broken nation and wondered aloud whether healing was even possible anymore.

Centuries later, enslaved African Americans heard that question and gave it an answer the prophet never could. From the depths of suffering most of us cannot fathom, they composed the spiritual There Is a Balm in Gilead. Where Jeremiah asked if healing existed, they declared it: "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul."

Think about the audacity of that. People stripped of their freedom, their families, their very names took a question of despair and turned it into a declaration of faith. They didn't sing "there might be" or "there could be." They sang "there IS."

That is what makes this spiritual so remarkable. It was not written from a place of comfort. It was forged in the furnace of affliction by people who had every reason to agree with Jeremiah's despair. Instead, they testified that the Great Physician was still at work, even in the darkest places.

Some of you are sitting with Jeremiah's question today. You are wondering whether healing is still possible for your marriage, your body, your broken heart. The testimony of that ancient song still stands: there IS a balm. El Roi, the God Who Sees, has not looked away from your pain.