Missing persons (part two)

Thousands (or more) people are fasting and praying for Sierra Shields.

She is a 30-year old Christian ministry graduate student and a resident of New York City. She disappeared without a trace on January 14.

The church to which I belong cares deeply for Sierra. Her brother is our minister of worship. Many members of our congregation are Sierra’s personal friends or one-time schoolmates at Rochester College.

You could say that praying for Sierra’s safe return is at the top of the “trending” list at church. It was the unofficial theme of our Sunday morning worship gathering this week.

This got me thinking.

The 20 days since Sierra disappeared feel desperate, empty, terrible.

Perhaps because her absence is not something we chose and her return appears to be out of our control.

But what about the people whose absence we could change and whose return is completely within our control?

What about people in our lives who might as well be missing because we simply choose to make other things more important?

Why is it so often that it takes someone dying or going missing for us to make our relationship with them a priority?

It’s the family member or friend who was once so close, but may now be distant because life moved in different directions.

It’s the child, parent, or spouse who shares physical space with you each day, but busy-ness and taking-for-grantedness keeps you from really trying to connect and enjoy each other (while you can).

It’s the person who once had an important place in your life until abuse, conflict, or misunderstanding planted a grudge that is keeping you apart. Forgiveness and reconciliation are never far from your mind, but you can always get around to that later, right?

Sierra Shields is missing.

But when I think about it, so are a lot of other people in our lives that we could find just by looking across the dinner table or picking up the phone.

To those people, the missing person just might be us.