"My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick ... I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead?" (Jeremiah 8:18, 21-22).

Is there no salve, no soothing ointment, no medicine for our souls?

The hymn we'll sing after the message says there is: "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul."1

That's what we have in this passage from the prophet Jeremiah that my Bible describes as a "lament over Judah."2 What another editor titles: "The Prophet Mourns For The People." A "sin-sick soul." Jeremiah's soul; a soul sick of sin. Sick of everything that separates us from one another, from God and even from ourselves.

Jeremiah so personifies that part of the human condition that we named it for him. The word …