Joy in Samaria

After Acts 8:4-8

Forced to flee, he finds himself

in that place where the one met

the woman at the well. It remains

a halfway kind of place, believing

half of this and half of that,

a hodgepodge of scrolls and idols

and superstition. Even in his fear

and his near brush with chains,

he speaks, he preaches, he performs

signs. And they listen, as if they

are one body, in one accord, and

they see the unclean spirits 

screaming in the pain of discovery

and identification, abandon 

the human habitats, and they see

the paralyzed and lame suddenly

healed, and the crowd in one accord

knows what they are seeing is

not of this earth, and the idols

and the superstitions fall and

melt away, replaced by great joy.

Photograph by Pablo Heimplatz via Unsplash. Used with permission.