“For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” (Jer 8:21–22).
Over the past couple of days I’ve had repeat visits to one of the most iconic hospitals in Israel: Hadassah Ein Kerem. It is home to the famous Chagall stained-glass windows and is nestled in the beautiful mountains of Judea, the same town where, according to tradition, John the Baptist was born. While there, I noticed a phrase from Jeremiah 8:22 posted on a doorway: “the health of the daughter of my people.”
As I looked at those words, it struck me that Jeremiah 8:22 names the central problem in the book of Jeremiah. And it is only the new covenant that provides the solution: “‘For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the LORD, ‘Because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her”’” (Jer 30:17).
And though I have never witnessed a miraculous healing of the heart in a hospital, I have seen it again and again wherever the gospel is preached in Israel.
Without doubt, Hadassah is home to some of the world’s finest doctors. It is also one of the rare places in Israel where Jewish and Arab medical teams work side by side to bring healing to Jewish and Arab patients. Yet while Jews and Arabs may come together there for the sake of physical healing, the deeper reality is that hate and hurt keep both peoples irreconcilably divided, worlds apart (see Jer 17:11).
And though I have never witnessed a miraculous healing of the heart in a hospital, I have seen it again and again wherever the gospel is preached in Israel. I will never forget the day I heard a man named Jihad—a name that refers to an Islamic holy war against Jews and Christians—thanking God for Israel and the Jewish people for giving him his Jewish Savior.
O let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem, which our Great Physician lovingly provides to all who receive the gospel of the new covenant: “Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them; and I will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth” (Jer 33:6).
