To Make The Wounded Whole

This afternoon and evening I visited with a young couple I know. They've had a scary and eventful summer, buying a house and also having husband & father have a tumor removed and go a few weeks believing he had a serious cancer --but then learning that he doesn't.

I was given a tour of the new (still empty) place, which is at a far edge of the neighborhood. It's a neat little row house and behind it, growing wild in the narrow alley that runs between the rows, I was surprised to see a tall tree with large heart-shaped leaves and sticky green fruit. It's completely unfamiliar to me and my friends had no idea what it was.

I snapped off a sample and on the way home I saw a fellow I know and he immediately said, "Oh, a Balm of Gilead tree!" When I got home I searched the term and sure enough, it's the name for a hybrid between balsam poplar and the eastern cottonwood --and this is the tree.

The name is a biblical reference to the medicinal resin myrrh, but when I heard the phrase I immediately recalled Paul Robeson singing the old spiritual:

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.

I am very glad tonight, knowing that we won't be losing a fine young man to the caprice of disease, and that there's a Balm of Gilead growing behind his new home.