Balm in Gilead

   "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole",  What a beautiful song!  How often we miss the very thing that would 'make us whole'.  Very few people come from a 'perfect' home.  Every day the statistics warn us that homes and families are crumbling. 

   "Yes," she says to me, "one of his brothers is an alcoholic—for the most part the rest have done alright." 

   I have seen alcoholism up close and personal.  In my opinion the cause of my mother's alcoholism was a deep inner wound.  A wound that would not heal, and she drank to ease the pain.  Even so, it would not go away.  No matter how anyone tried-- the very help she needed--she wouldn't accept, and she fought against it.

   Why is it that some folks make it out of poor situations, and some don't?  One man told his children as they left home, "Your mother and I aren't perfect, we have our faults.  Some of those faults you have picked up, but now as you leave home you have to make a decision. If you take them with you, they are no longer ours, but yours.  You make the decision."

   "My mother did this, my father did that, that's the reason I do what I do."  No, we make our decisions.  Why do some children follow in their parents footsteps and become alcoholics, single mothers, smokers, druggies?  To some people it is the way they expect life to be, and that is self-fulfilling.  And then there is Amy.

   "I saw my mom, and I thought, I'm not gonna be no single mom."

   Is life perfect for Amy?  No.  It isn't any more perfect for her than for anyone else.  But she's smart enough to see how hopeless the other life is.  She has laid hold on something better.        

   Ecclesiastes 4:9&10 "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.
10)  For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.

     "She wasn't really a very good mother, was she?"  my cousin stated the fact. 

  "No, she wasn't, but maybe she did the best she could with what she had to work with," I reply.

   "Yeah, that's probably right."

   And maybe that's why some people make it and some don't.  Some wallow in self-pity, blaming others for their problems.  Others accept that we all fall, we all have problems, and that's just the way things are.  We would like for things to be different, but they aren’t.

Hebrews 11:13-16 "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14)  For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. 15)  And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16)  But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!