Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
So why has the healing of my dear people not come about? Jeremiah 8:22
Is there no balm in Gilead, Holy God? For we, your people, desperately need a balm, a healing, a sense that the desperate pain we are feeling will come to an end. Even as people walk the streets of so many cities in the United States, demonstrating against the deaths of African-American citizens: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, among far too many others at the hands of the police, others are demonstrating in solidarity in London, England; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Berlin, Germany; Auckland, New Zealand; Paris, France; Copenhagen, Denmark; Milan, Italy; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Dublin, Ireland; Toronto, Canada; Perth, Australia; and many more places across the globe.
We need a balm, God of Love and Peace, a healing of the sin of racism. We need to be made whole.
All of this comes in the midst of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to sicken and kill people throughout the world, even as governments disagree on how best to contain and control the spread of the virus.
We need a balm, God of All People, a healing for our troubled bodies and spirits.
Driven to our knees by the loss and pain, our minds and hearts filled with questions and doubts, our spirits often at their lowest ebb in these recent days, we turn to you, Father-Mother God, in desperation, knowing that only in you can we find comfort, healing, a balm for those things we cannot seem to get right on our own.
We need a balm, God of Hope, a healing for the broken places in our world.
Adapted from World News This Week in Prayer 6/5/20