Did anyone come across some truly good news today? And, I don’t mean of the partisan kind where your people won out over their people, which is the basic formula for so much news in the seesaw battle for our hearts and minds.

I mean the kind of news that’s both large scale and something everyone can cheer about.

So, I came across an article entitled, “The Best Global News You (Probably) Haven’t Heard.” And, no, it was not in a commonly read source most people would access.

The question is whether extreme poverty around the world is increasing or decreasing.

In 2014, 84% of Americans were unaware that it has been steadily decreasing and a full two thirds believed it was increasing.

I quote from an article published on OurWorldinData.org.

As poverty researchers Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina explain, since around 1970 we began “living in a world in which the number of non-poor people is rising, while the number of poor people is falling. According to the estimates . . . there were 2.2 billion people living in extreme poverty in 1970, and there were 705 million people living in extreme poverty in 2015. The number of extremely poor people in the world is three-times lower than in 1970.”

The rate of extreme poverty reduction began to increase even faster after 1990. As Roser and Ortiz-Ospina note,

In 1990, there were 2 billion people living in extreme poverty. With a reduction to 705 million in 2015, this means that on average, every day in the 25 years between 1990 and 2015, 137,000 fewer people were living in extreme poverty.

On every day in the last 25 years there could have been a newspaper headline reading, “The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 137,000 since yesterday.” Unfortunately, the slow developments that entirely transform our world never make the news.

I’m attaching a graph that supports this.

Now, this is cause for us to rejoice, while not becoming complacent. We can celebrate this fact while acknowledging that extreme poverty still exists and that poverty of any kind is something all of us should pay attention to.

It is also a place where Christians and non-Christians who care deeply about others can join arms in a battle for good.

Of course, Jesus calls all of us to serve the poor and his example of humility and compassion is certainly a standard for us to consider. Interestingly, he not only calls our attention to the materially impoverished but he uses the very beginning of his most famous teaching, the one we know as the Sermon on the Mount, to say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3) In other words, poverty is often more than meets the eye.

What to take from this? I’ll put it out there that we have an obligation to seek out those who are suffering privation and to do something about it. This means those who are hungry and without basic needs. It also means those who suffer in other ways, through violence and oppression. And, it means we should keep our eyes and ears open to those around us who are weakened by the forces of life.

Finally, we should wake up in the morning, giving thanks for good news like this while also rolling up our sleeves to take action anew each day.

Are each of us ready to answer the question: “What did you do this week to help reduce poverty?”