The Truest Balm

 In the ever-changing landscape of crisis and fear that we navigate all too often these days, the overwhelming love of God and the message of love embodied in Christ are the truest balm we may apply to our wounded spirits.

Here are three different messages, with passages from Scripture to correlate with the themes of Atonement, Blessings and Balm.  In these passages, we may take heart that Jesus loves us and cares for us. In Christ we are healed.

·    The first is Blessings: Unceasing Dependence-Continual Peace

Leviticus 25.21

“ Do not dwell upon remote events; this anxiety about the future is contrary to a religious state of mind. …A life of faith produces two things. First, it enables us to see God in everything. Secondly, it holds the mind in a state of readiness for whatever may be his will…"

"This continual, unceasing dependence, this state of entire peace and acquiescence of the soul in whatever may happen, is the true, silent martyrdom of self.” - Francois Fenelon

·   The second is Atonement: Not without Blood

From Leviticus 17.11

“God has made more than one covenant with man, but ever, not without blood!..This is the wondrous note that rings through all Scripture, from Abel’s sacrifice at the gate of paradise to the songs of the ransomed in Revelation…There can be no fellowship with God, but in the blood, in the death, of his blessed Son.”-Andrew Murray

· The third is Balm: A Balm in Gilead

Jeremiah 8.22

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole,

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the sin-sick soul.

Sometimes I feel discouraged

And think my work’s in vain,

But then the Holy Spirit

Revives my soul again.

If you can’t preach like Peter,

If you can’t pray like Paul,

Just tell the love of Jesus,

And say he died for all.

-African American Spiritual