The comfort of His peace which passes understanding; the blessed assurance of the healing and the deliverance from the evils of this world; that balm in Gilead after well over 400 years still offers a glimmer of hope for the repose from suffering and pain that so eluded our enslaved ancestors. We hope. There wasn’t and there never is a blessed assurance. Faith, like hope and redemption is an ongoing battle. To offer the Balm in Gilead as a “fait accompli” is to deny the circu