good news

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Reading the news from around the world today, I was reminded of my deceased brother-in-law, who, when I was working at a newspaper, wondered why there couldn't be a newspaper that reported all the good news, the warming news, the news that made you smile inside and out. He was quite serious about it. And sometimes, reading the news as I was this morning, I could see his point ... men, women and children being killed or maimed or going hungry or sick or ... the list is endless.


And sometimes it is the same inside as it is in the news -- a lot of very difficult and painful pictures painted in the mind ... no wonder people take illicit drugs. It can be so pleasing to read or hear good news, news that elevates the darkened interior. Bright and cheerful. Yes, we are all going to heaven after we die and, for those inclined, there will be 77 virgins to make things more pleasant. It's good to hear good news. But most of the good news comes at the expense of bad news ... yes, we're going to heaven, perhaps, but we are also going to die in order to get there. Most are not dying to die.

Good news/bad news.

As the former television anchorman Walter Cronkite once said, "News isn't about the number of cats that did not get up on the garage roof." Going to heaven is also about the cat on the garage roof -- the death we must address when we're honest, the bad news.

And the civil rights leader Martin Luther King once said approximately, "It's not what's wrong with the world that scares people. What really scares them is that everything is all right."

Good news, everybody! The cat is on the garage roof!