Don’t let the darkness win! A new year arrives—-let us greet it with joy and expectation. We need not be deluded or blind to set our hats and our faces to the horizon with hope. Here are 24 real reasons (out of 1000) to rejoice in 2024.

1. We Know the Secret to a Happy Life

This Harvard Study unveils the secret to a happy long life. And—-it’s not the secret shouted daily from celebrity culture: This I Know For Sure! Study, love, know, observe and serve yourself first, my dears; YOU above all others. Oh what a tiny dull sad world this makes! But loving others deeply, well and long cracks open our little hearts and grows us large, brings us health and joy and lengthens our lives. Yes, we love imperfectly. But every morning we get to rise and love again. Rejoice and keep at it!

2. Scientists Discovered 380 New Species In Southeast Asia

Every year we count the species lost to extinction—-and we mourn. Rightly so. But the earth and its creatures are so much more vast and variegated than we even know. “In May, the World Wide Fund for Nature announced that scientists had found 380 new species — one mammal, 46 reptiles, 24 amphibians, 19 fishes, and 290 plants — in a single remote region of Southeast Asia.” Likely there are many more species as yet undiscovered and unnamed.

Rejoice in God’s infinite creativity and join him in caring for his creatures!

3. The Earth is Still (and Always) Full of the Love of God

We all long for a glimpse of the invisible God. But he’s given us so much more than glancing glimpses. Do you want to see what God is like, what he’s doing in the world? Look outside your windows, go for a hike, sit in a forest, kayak down a river, attend to the nuthatches at your feeder. His unfailing kindness is everyday on display—-a theater of love ——and the tickets are free.

Psalm 33

Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
    it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
2 Praise the Lord with the harp;
    make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
3 Sing to him a new song;
    play skillfully, and shout for joy.

4 For the word of the Lord is right and true;
    he is faithful in all he does.
5 The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
    the earth is full of his unfailing love.

4. Our Conflicted World Highlights Our Meaning and Purpose

In the midst of a fragmented, angry world, this is JUST the time for us to be who we are—”You are the light of the world,” Jesus said to those who follow him. How are we the light? “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God,” Jesus said. Paul tells us how to converse with others: “Let your conversation be always full of grace,  seasoned with salt,  so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

Where else will the world see God’s peace and grace in action if not through us? What an exciting time this is and what a life-saving mission we’ve been given! (Yes, even and especially through the 2024 US election season.)

5. The World Can End Plastic Pollution by 2040 (for real!)

It’s so easy to feel a sense of “climate doom” and hopelessness about the planet’s future, but good things are happening all around us. Here’s an especially hopeful word: The United Nations Environment Program says the world could successfully cut plastic pollution by a full 80% by 2040.

It outlines real ways and means of creating a circular economy that “would result in $1.27 trillion in savings for the world’s nations. And lower costs in health care, climate, air pollution, marine ecosystem degradation, and litigation would result in an additional $3.25 trillion saved. The shifts could also create an increase of 700,000 jobs by 2040, primarily in low-income countries. “ We CAN clean up the mess we’ve made of God’s creation.

6. The World is Always Ending

Does it feel like the world is ending? The apostles thought so 2000 years ago as well. And every generation since. The world we know is always ending because it’s always changing; there ARE no other times but changing times. Every Ending means a Beginning. So Rejoice—-because this makes this present moment all the more powerful and beautiful and worthy of attention. Listen to what the farmer Wendell Berry, with his hands deep in God’s good earth, recommends:

Listen to carrion—-put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

(excerpted from “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”)

7. Good People are Unleashing Goodness All Around Us

A Tik Tok Star Cleans Houses for Free

Marje Stagmeier transforms blighted properties into thriving communities.

After her son’s diagnosis, this woman started a cookie non-profit and raised 20 mill for cancer research.

Don’t let the news of shootings, violence and wars cloud your vision. I could personally track down more than 2,024 heroes and acts of kindness this last year alone just within my own friends and family. Such gestures—-from holding a door for someone all the way to caring for a dying spouse or an elderly parent——are neither random nor rare. They are happening all around us most of the time. (Read about some of them here.) Rejoice at the ways we all bind the worlds’ wounds with kindness. And keep it going!

8. Forgiveness is winning!

I know, you want to see my study and statistics on this. But I tell you, I’m seeing it and experiencing it nearly every day, in my own life and in many others. Yesterday, a friend wrote to tell me that her brother, estranged from their difficult mother for 50 years, just wrote his mother a letter of forgiveness. The mother had not changed at all, but he had.

In my writing classes, we’re discovering the power of language to write ourselves into a bigger story, a better story that opens into forgiveness, even reconciliation with the very ones who have wounded us. The earth is full of the love of God—-and we can be too. No matter what the new year brings. We can’t heal all the families and neighborhoods of the world, but we can start with our own. This is how we change the world—-by changing ourselves first.

9. We Are No Longer Alone

Many of us grew up feeling so very alone. Because everything must be kept secret: our poverty, violence at home, the work, the sadness, the mental health struggles. There could be no crack in one’s public face, remember? So we labored through the hardest things——alone. But we’re alone no more. One of the upsides of our show-and-tell-all culture is that we’re unmasking the myths, ignorance and stigma around mental health, trauma, stress, abusive relationships, addictions——all that ails us. SO many are ready to listen and help. Get off your island. Find your people. Find a support group. They’re waiting for you.

10. The Church Will Never Die

Yes, the Western Church is hemorrhaging. So many have given up congregating on the Sabbath and even given up on their faith. But millions of people around the globe still gather to raise their voices in praise, to learn from God’s word and one another and to go out into their neighborhoods. Some give up everything for their faith in Jesus, even their lives.

Whether the Church is persecuted by its enemies, abandoned by the deconstructionists, or radically re-shaped into new expressions of community, the Church will never die. Christ gave his body to the world to be the living body of Christ in the world. Our bodies are now His. Rejoice! Together, we’ve been chosen to be a part of this vast rescue mission of love. There is no greater joy.

11 - 24. Your Turn!

Wait! This is only 10 reasons to rejoice! Where are the other 14 I promised? It’s YOUR turn!

We all must do our part, because we all have limits of time and strength (or at least I do!)

Friends, would you finish this for me? What’s another reason to rejoice in 2024?