And why should I not be smiling,

knowing what I know now

about what comes after all this

when all the evil falls down,

when justice bursts like a sweet flood through the streets

and all the pennies thrown into all wishing wells

rise up like miracles?

Let me tell you the Good News:

There is Good News.

That’s it:

goodness, somewhere, rushing toward us

in the place where future meets present tense.

Hope unwinds across the fragile world

and whispers its nightmares away.

There is a good day coming, I can see it,

when the walls built up between countries

crumble back into the earth they rose from

and all the people run free where they want

like every contour of every nation was shaped by the same God,

there’s a day coming when bullets freeze themselves

in the policeman’s guns, when all the Border Patrol cars

stall out in one breath, their guns and tasers

melt into plows and paintbrushes,

and the children trapped in desert camps

sing down the walls that hold them,

they sing back the road to their mothers and their fathers.

The day is coming when the president

is banned from Twitter, a day when CEOs

open their wallets

and cry

because they are bankrupt of love

and all their paper is just paper

and the politicians topple

from their soft seats on national television

their nameplates erase themselves

and Justice raises her foot to crush all those who crushed their neighbor.

See how the prison bars pull away from each other

and make a bridge to return the citizens bottled up in them,

reverse the flow of the pipeline and the fathers come home

and the mothers come home and the children come home

and all the broken pieces of your heart come back home.

Here a day is coming when the lead coughs itself out of the children of Flint,

the PFAS climbs from our rivers and writes a letter in the sky:

this water is yours now.

And sunflowers burst from oil spills, the squash and the bean vine

return to hug their sister corn stalk and the fields run messy and abundant

with all we need, even the whales put on weight, their low songs

skim across the ocean bursting pollution from their migration path.

The day we admit migration is a habit every animal is in love with.

The days are here

when love wins

when the last word is love

when the hands of abusers

freeze like deadweights on their arms,

when men open their mouths

to contradict women

and nothing comes out.

When the halls of power

ring out with a chorus of

I believe women.

And God is a woman, but not the way Ariana Grande thinks.

And God is judgmental but not because God is mean

but because God is all goodness sorting itself out from all evil

and goodness reaches into every cracked chasm of our lives

until it overflows with love and love and love and love.

That’s why my smile scares you, isn’t it:

because I tell the truth

you never thought you’d see me

trade two fistfuls of anger

for two fistfuls of hope

pulling it up from the bottom of the ocean like seashells

and don’t you wish you knew what it was to feel this joy?

See I heard the death you plot behind closed doors,

the belts you pulled tighter across the poor

how insecure you are that you need to make me mourn.

But I borrow joy from a future

where your breath can’t reach, where your power doesn’t speak,

I am in celebration for all our coming healing.

Justice is the tsunami I will surf

that gorgeous river setting everything free

and don’t you see?

This is just the beginning.

This poem, based on Luke 1:46-55 was written and shared by Hillary Watson at Shalom Community Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Dec. 16, 2018.