My 5 Biggest Takeaways from 2024

I've recapped my five top takeaways from 2024: Politics, Jesus, Family, Community, Content. What would top your list of how this year has changed your life?

Happy New Year!

Depending on when you read this, we might be just hours away from or already in 2025. I tend to anticipate what's next without much thought about the past, but this week, I’m taking a moment to reflect on 2024 and the major ideas on my mind.

Photo by Walls.io on Unsplash

Welcome to my 5 Big Ideas from 2024.

Before I begin with my list, here are a few notes:

1. I stumbled upon Jen Hitze’s substack newsletter, 5 Big Ideas, earlier this year. In this weekly newsletter, Jen explores “topics related to intelligence (human + machine), intuition, and self-improvement.” I look forward to it landing in my inbox (along with THIS and THIS newsletter). I am ripping off her idea this week (and possibly a few times in the coming year). Thanks, Jen.

2. You’ll see that some of these five ideas are timely because they directly relate to the global picture of 2024, but most are personal to me.

3. I’ve culled most of these thoughts from my 2024 journal (and shared a few images). It’s interesting to see that they are all from January 2024. What I began processing in those early days impacted my whole year.

Let’s begin!

I. Politics

Transparently, I dreaded what 2024 represented.

I was horrified by the actions at the Capital on January 6, 2021. And like many people I talked with (on both the right and left), I was worried about what might happen if the outcome of the elections didn’t turn out as one group or another hoped. We’ve yet to transfer power from one administration to the next, but it appears we dodged that bullet. Yet, while we wait on what this might look like in 2025, I’m reminded of what both parties warned of this election:

The fate of democracy hangs in the balance.

Hope doesn’t sell.

This has been the case for the history of humanity. In the days of Noah, God destroyed the earth because of the evil spread throughout the world. As bad or dark as things may seem today, it has been worse in world history. God destroyed the earth because of humanity’s wickedness. Men and women once sacrificed their children to their gods. Wicked leaders have attempted to exterminate people groups.

Will democracy crumble now that your candidate has lost (or won) the presidency? It might. Or it might thrive. Most likely, it will land somewhere in between, but no matter how you view the outcome of this past election, the world has been darker…much darker. If you follow Jesus, your hope doesn’t lie in a politician, a policy, or a government.

Your hope lies in Jesus.

II. Jesus

It all begins and ends with Jesus.

I have multiple journal notes pointing to this thought…in the first month of 2024 alone! It’s easy to become distracted from this, but Jesus is the hope of the world.

Full confession: I am writing days before Christmas, so my mind is on Christ's coming. As I shared in my Advent posts, the Old Testament reminds us of the importance of waiting for our Savior's return and paints a picture of what it means to long for Jesus.

In January 2024, I read the Book of Job, believed to be the oldest book in the Bible. The majority of this text expresses Job’s lament over his losses, his feelings of distance from God, and the reactions of his friends to his anguish. Within this ancient scripture, Job identifies a fundamental need of humanity — a Mediator.

“I need someone to mediate between God and me,
as a person mediates between friends.
For soon I must go down that road
from which I will never return.” -Job 16:21-22

Long before Job uttered that phrase, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. They fell for the temptation of the serpent, and in God’s punishment for them all, he pronounced to the snake:

“And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.” -Genesis 3:15

God is alluding to the moment thousands of years later when it would seem Satan had defeated Jesus on the cross (struck his heel), but Jesus had the final word (crushing Satan’s head) when he rose from the tomb and showed he has the power over sin and death. Jesus has come, crushed the head of the snake, and become a mediator between God and humanity. We need Jesus.

The intensity of 2024 reminded me everything begins and ends with Jesus. For me, this starts in my home.

III. Parenting

2024 ushered in a new era for me and Kia. Three of our four kids permanently moved out of the house¹, and our youngest causes as much drama as a house plant (seriously, our cat is more trouble than he is). We are entering the young adult phase of parenting, which is where Job found himself in the opening verses of that text.

Those few verses are meant to demonstrate Job's righteousness. Though Job’s children had left the home, Job still took spiritual responsibility for them.

“Job’s sons would take turns preparing feasts in their homes, and they would also invite their three sisters to celebrate with them. When these celebrations ended—sometimes after several days—Job would purify his children. He would get up early in the morning and offer a burnt offering for each of them. For Job said to himself, “Perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.” -Job 1:4-5

Something drove Job to appease God on his children’s behalf. I don’t know that righteousness works like this (making sacrifices on another’s behalf), but the author pointed out Job’s actions as a sign of holiness. Undoubtedly, it showed how Job valued his children’s relationship with God.

What do you most value for your family?

About a decade ago (when our four kids were between the ages of 5 and 15), Kia and I made a conscious decision to prioritize two things over everything else:

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1. Friendship: We want our kids to be friends with us and each other as adults.

2. Jesus: We want our kids to love Jesus.

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While they are only in the beginning stages of their adult lives (and one yet to make it), they seem to be headed toward both. They communicate regularly outside of me and Kia. They also love Jesus.²

So, this year, we’ve upped the ante.

IV. Community

The two oldest still live in the KC area, so Kia and I added one goal to our values list:

• Community: develop friendships based around a shared love of Jesus.

In the Fall of 2023, we started a Bible study for young adults (18-25ish) in our home. To begin, it was a struggle. I underline, highlight, and draw out the word struggle. Some weeks would be just my kids and other weeks, we had just one or two others, but we kept at it, and something happened. When “group” last met, we had 19 young people sitting around our living room participating in a White Elephant gift exchange, and if everyone on our list had shown up, it would have been closer to 30!

What happens throughout the week outside of the Sunday meeting time is even more exciting and indicative of why so many were gathered in our home. They regularly get together for coffee, movies, and activities in large and small groups. What I’ve seen this year is what Paul encouraged the Galatian church to do:

“Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.”
-Galatians 6:2

This group of young adults shares each other's burdens in many ways, and the most crucial is friendship.

I don’t exactly know what led to a house-full each week, but I do have three suggestions for anyone who wants to start their own small group or bible study:

1. Food. It sounds too simple, but it is true—food draws people. We provide a full meal each week, which is a hit for many reasons.³ There is something sacred about breaking bread together.

2. We are consistent. We meet all the time, but we will take a few breaks throughout the year (for instance, we will be off for a few weeks for Christmas and the New Year). Our group knows to plan on Sunday at 6:30 for a meal and Bible study.

3. Meet anyway. To be consistent means we meet even though we’re tired. We meet when only two people are RSVP. We meet when the weather is yucky. Just meet.

Community is essential to that group of young adults and has also been vital to Kia and me. Being in this community has pushed me to learn from my 2024 Word of the Year: CONTENT.

V. Content

My yearly “resolution” is to focus on one word for an entire year. This year, my word is CONTENT (as in finding contentment). I wrote a few early takeaways in August, including generosity, complacency, gratitude, and reset.

However, as I flipped through my journal from January, I stumbled on an interesting little note:

If you can’t read it, the Scripture is from the Psalms:

“And may the Lord our God show us his approval
and make our efforts successful.
Yes, make our efforts successful!” -Psalm 90:17

I can only be truly content when I find God’s approval, and I can’t earn enough, work hard enough, or succeed sufficiently to find his approval. I find approval when I live as God’s child.

A little over a year ago, we adopted a cat named Perry.⁴ To the chagrin of my family, Perry adopted me as his favorite person, meaning he finds me to cuddle with in the mornings and evenings. Early on, during one of these cuddling sessions, I realized how completely safe and secure Perry felt when he lay in my lap.

This is what it means to find God’s approval: I climb onto his lap completely secure because nothing can distract me when I am there.

When I am in that place, I am content. In addition, when I find God’s approval, I see success.

Which brings me back to Jesus.

I need Jesus to find God's approval. It’s not until I bow my knee to Jesus that I move from God’s creation to God’s child. Then, I can climb into God’s lap and find contentment.

Are you content?

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My challenge to you is to slow down in the next few days to reflect on 2024. What have you learned? Where have you grown? How have you changed your views?

Don’t let another year slip by without learning and growing from it.

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Let me close by thanking a few new newsletter subscribers: Tony and Peggy. I am grateful you added this to your email inbox.

This year, my goal was to grow to 700 total email subscribers. As you can see in the screenshot below, I have grown from 640 at the beginning of the year to 694 earlier this week.⁵ I am amazed; that is close to 10% growth!

However, I would really like to reach my goal of 700, so would you be willing to share this with a friend? Just use the button below to send it via email or social media.

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1. I put a question mark by this statement because I recognize permanence is only as long as the moment.

2. It’s been with one caveat: How they love Jesus may look different than how I might define it. In other words, their doctrine and theologies don’t always line up perfectly with mine. I’ve learned I’m learning to be open-handed with them.

3. The preparation of the meal has been an addition to the community aspect. Each week, we have 5-7 people in our kitchen helping plan and prepare the meal)

4. We named him after Perry the Platypus from the Disney show “Phineus and Ferb,” so we could say, “Where’s Perry?” when looking for him. If you know, you know.

5. If you’re curious about that significant drop in late 2023, Substack prompted me to remove a sizable number of disconnected subscribers. It was definitely a difficult decision to make.