Bad news is unavoidable. It’s a given. Don’t have any currently? Give it a few minutes…It pervades screens, conversations, and news cycles. But it’s different when it comes home and becomes personal—when it hits home and shatters the shape of our lives. When the diagnosis, the job loss, or a broken relationship takes center stage, it feels like life itself begins to unravel.

Some bad news hits with a single shock, while other times it builds in a steady progression, worsening by the day or the week, eroding foundations in the process and throwing what was certain into question. In these times, we’re not merely faced with bad news; we’re left living in the middle of it, dealing with its parameters and consequences day in and day out. Then come the questions: How much longer will I have to face it down? Will this bad news have the last word?

I became intimately familiar with these questions (and many more) over the course of six years walking with Gretchen through a terminal diagnosis. With four daughters, we chose together to live a full life—to enjoy one another, to feast with friends, to do good things together, and to share in the hope and joy of God’s goodness, even in the face of the worst news we’d ever received.  

The Power of Better News

Bad news pursues us with a full throated desire to destroy. It’s not something we can ignore, and it doesn’t leave us where it finds us. We have to fight to overcome it and get back to where we need to be. Bad news requires a counter—a response and a better narrative. The story has to change, and only one thing can accomplish it: good news. 

Good news has the power to transcend current circumstances and speak hope into overwhelming darkness. It awakens and sustains vital imagination, the required additive to see beyond the shadow. It “refreshes the bones.” —Prov 15:30

When bad news declares that everything is fixed and insurmountable, good news dares our imaginations to create a more positive outlook and convince us that there’s more to the story than can be currently seen. In the tension between what is seen and what is possible, imagination is not merely an escape, it’s a pathway to hope.

A Promise Beyond Imagination

I find myself returning to a passage from Scripture that captures this possibility. It reads, 

No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. —1 Corinthians 2:9 

These words are an awe-inspiring promise and a reminder that the good news God offers is far beyond anything we can comprehend—literally unimaginable. It surpasses what we can see, hear, or even dream (and we can see, hear, and dream some incredible things!). In times and places where we find ourselves regularly paralyzed by limitations, God’s vision for us presses well beyond each and every boundary we encounter.

This is what really good news does, inviting us to reimagine our stories, especially when the good news promises outcomes beyond anything we’ve ever considered to be good. It enables us to live in hope rather than despair, to see beyond the bad news that demands our attention, and to trust that there’s a future being shaped in ways that defy our understanding.

Interestingly, this is a practice business leaders often apply when we face down markets, less than optimal OKR metrics, or bad P&Ls. We are fast to whip out the forecast and remember that we’ve felt these squeezes before, and the bad news hasn’t sunk us. But it’s often not as simple to apply the process to personal experiences.  

To Those Carrying the Weight of Unbearable News

All of that said, good news is neither a quick fix nor an easy answer; it’s a promise that we can grasp for dear life when everything else is slipping away. It’s the unexpected lifeline that pulls us out of the dark. It’s the very hand of Christ reaching out when the waves are crashing and sinking is inevitable (Matt 14:22-33).

To my friends who feel crushed, who are carrying the weight of unbearable news right now, I want to remind you of this truth and encourage you not to lose heart. The reality of deep and lasting pain and the crushing weight that bad news can bring cannot be denied. But the Good News proclaims that what you’re enduring is not the end of the story.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. —2 Corinthians 4:16-18

This Good News is beyond our imagination, but not God’s. Its reality requires supernatural intervention, but it holds the power to refresh, to sustain, and to remind us that no matter how heavy the bad news may be, something far greater is being prepared for those who love Him. It doesn’t remove the pain, but it does give us a reason to hope in the midst of it when all else fails.

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. -1 Thess. 4:13