Jeremiah 8 Devotional

The Healing No One Sought

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?”Jeremiah 8:22 (BSB)

God asks a simple question through Jeremiah. When people fall, do they not get up? When someone turns away, does he not turn back (8:4)? Yet Jerusalem keeps turning away and refuses to return. No one stops to ask what he has done wrong (8:6). Even the stork knows its season, but God's people do not know what he requires (8:7). Their teachers cover a deep wound with promises of peace (8:11).

The chapter ends in tears, as the people lament that the season for rescue has come and gone (8:18-20). Then comes the question of 8:22: if there is medicine and a doctor, why are his people still not healed? The tragedy is not that healing was unavailable. It is that the people would not come to be healed. Jesus said he came for the sick, not the healthy, and to call sinners rather than the righteous (Mark 2:17). The first step toward his healing is the honest question this chapter says no one would ask.

To think about: Is there something you need to stop and honestly name before God today, so that you can come to him for healing?