Available Medicine

I seek out pharmacies in foreign countries. Here in Africa, medications for skin ailments, malaria, and prescription strength drugs are available over the counter and quite affordable and sometimes downright cheap! In Sri Lanka, for example, the malaria medication that sells for $9 per pill in the US, cost me $4 for 500 pills. I could start my own cottage industry to missionaries traveling to mosquito zones.

But the kind of balm from Gilead I seek the most in my travels is not the kind that comes in a tube, box or bottle.

Love is patient, love is kind…

When a salve is used for a wound, the first question the victim asks “will this hurt?” Sometimes it does, but the one dressing the injury offers reassurance, “it will make it better.”

For God so loved… John 3:16

The first thing I saw was the brilliant white of her teeth. Her smile broke out across her whole face. Her eyes were sparkling and as she spoke she threw her head back as if to accentuate what she was about to say. “I love you so much! I just love you” she grinned.

“I love you too.” I sincerely replied. Her shower of affection was infectious. “I’m glad you are happy and you had a good time.”

Sometimes the outpouring is hard to receive. My flesh carries the memory of unloved rejection; feelings of unworthiness, and of being unseen. When a child thousands of miles away from my world and reality approaches to apply balm over my wounded heart, inside I flinch. But these doses I receive, of foreign medicine, go a long way in towards my heart’s rehabilitation.