A Poem: The Good News

Have you heard the good news?
Have you heard how it’s all good?
How the good news underpins the bad,
supersedes it,
overarches it,
surrounds it in one great promise,
as the sky does the circling earth.

That the bad may be contained and
transformed bit by bit
by the light that gets in –
so that it becomes something else,
something which,
while not meant for good,
has lost its power to harm.

Have you heard the good news?
It’s enough to believe
when the bad presses in,
that the good is the wide outer expanse,
and the bad can be outshone,
outlasted, and made benign
by a persistent faith that believes.

Ana Lisa de Jong
July 2018