Helped a lot
May 7, 2008 (Wednesday)
A current Noxzema Cleansing Cream ad lists the ingredients: Water, Stearic Acid, Linseed Oil, Soy Bean Oil, Fragrance, Ammonium Hydroxide, Camphor, Menthol, Eucalyptus Oil, Propylene Glycol, Gelatin, Calcium Hydroxide. The ad says this is the original formula, so I assume that’s what was in the first jar of Noxzema I ever saw when I was not quite eleven years old in the summer of 1942.
I had gone to Linder Lake, a public swimming pool long since gone today, right around the corner from where I had formerly lived with my parents. The location is only three miles from Timbergrove Baptist Church, where I am now the pastor. In order to get a good tan, I resolved to spend the day at the pool, lying in the sun. That’s what I did. All day. You can guess the result. That’s right, sunburn. Really, really bad sunburn.
Great big blisters, three and four inches across appeared. I was burned everywhere on my body except where the swimming trunks had blocked the sun’s rays.
Someone gave me a jar of Noxzema to soothe the pain. It really helped. When you read the list of ingredients, you know that everyone in the entire apartment house where my sisters and I were living with our mother that summer knew that somebody was using something not normally used. Its fragrance filled our apartment and all the others, too, I’m sure.
I’ll never think of Noxzema without remembering it as a soothing balm, which helped me endure the painful consequences of a dumb thing I did as a kid.
Remember the song, “Balm of Gilead?” “There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sinsick soul.” The song is based on the Scripture, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” (Jeremiah 8:22 NIV). The clear message of that verse is that God can help you, but only if you let Him do so.