Good News! 6 reasons (+4 more) to celebrate in 2018

Need a little good news? Feeling like the world’s just getting worse by the day? I was too, so I did a little research—academic and personal—and thought I’d share what I uncovered.

  1. We get to live longer. According to the UN, life expectancy has increased all over the world. This makes me happy because I plan to enjoy grandchildren, grandnieces, grandnephews, and great-grands. Maybe even the great-greats! Sweet.
  2. We are winning at beating poverty. Some of the things being done—access to public education, improved job preparedness, increased minimum wage, better education regarding reproductive health—are making a difference. Don’t get me wrong: we have a long way to go; but this post is about good news, so chin up! (Think I’m just sugar-coating? Check out this article: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty-at-higher-poverty-lines.)
  3. We are smarter about water usage. If you watched the movie The Book of Eli, you might suspect our frivolous use of H20 could lead to the apocalypse. But, by all accounts, we are doing better preserving the world’s water supply. So, don’t be worried that the earth is seconds away from devolving into an arid dust ball. Just turn the faucet off, like all good humans should do anyway. (But I highly recommend The Book of Eli, if for no other reason than you get to hear Denzel Washington quote from the King James Version of the Holy Bible. Be still my heart.)
  4. We have eradicated (or almost eradicated) a number of deadly diseases. In my mother’s childhood days, the fear of polio was real and valid. Mother recalls outbreaks in her region that would cause parents to quarantine their little ones. Today, I bet few children have even heard of it, much less know what it is. Polio still exists in some places, but the number of children paralyzed by it is smaller and smaller every year. In the US, we have vaccines that protect us from diseases that can permanently alter health or worse. We no longer fear things like measles, mumps, or rubella in this country; and globally, the number of these once common maladies is lower than ever. Thanks to advances in medical research, even AIDS/HIV is no longer a death sentence. That’s some good news right there! Want the details? You’ll find more info here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/7-deadly-diseases-the-world-has-almost-eradicated/
  5. We are beating cancer. Innovations in cancer treatments and early diagnosis methods have reduced cancer deaths by 25% in the US. There’s still a lot to learn on this front, but the good news is that cancer research and development is leading to real solutions. (Have you hugged a scientist today?)
  6. We have really great young people! Stop believing the hype about how lousy kids are today. It’s just not true. [bctt tweet=”Stop believing the hype about how lousy kids are today. It’s just not true. ” username=”amlrev”]The teens and twenty-somethings I know are awesome! They protect the environment, consider new ideas critically, shop locally, engage politically, and are widely diverse in their interests and convictions. Even if you had no other source of hope, this would be enough. Today’s young people are making change happen bit by bit. They have their eyes on big picture topics—things like peace, justice, wholeness—and aren’t distracted by the way things are because they are too busy thinking about the way things can be.

And there’s lots more! Really. There are many things going extraordinarily well in our nation and in our world. It’s just that bad news sells better. That’s one reason why news outlets tell stories that play on our fears: so we’ll stay focused on their channel or website and buy the stuff they are advertising.

Of course, there are other reasons why we think about the negative more than the positive. But the reality is that there are great things happening all around us. The problem is that too often we just fail to see them. I’m trying to do better at that. Here are a few things I noticed just today.

• The city picked up my trash. BUT they also picked up my recyclables. This was not a thing when I was a child. I did not even know what the word meant.
• My computer is in my lap. MY LAP! A machine that allows me (among other things) to shop, bank, connect, and write, is both portable and affordable. Listen, back in the 1980s I typed my college essays. On a TYPEWRITER. (It was electric, not the Royal Upright I used in high school, but still.)
• Today I learned that a member of my church is experiencing complications from surgery; but everything that is wrong can be fixed. Today’s medical care is tantamount to the magic of yesteryear. It’s amazing.
• And today, I met a woman whose baby was born 14 weeks before his due date. And he is fine. Completely fine.

Good news. It’s encouraging, don’t you think?

So what about you? Anything hope-filled in your day?

“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. ”
2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV)

By Aileen MItchell Lawrimore

Aileen Mitchell Lawrimore is a mother x 3, wife x 35 (years not men), minister, speaker, writer, retreat leader, and lover of beagles and books. She has a lot to say.