Missing persons
A close friend of many of my friends is missing since last week.
I only know her as an acquaintance. Yet news of her disappearance alarmed me as if I woke in the morning to find that my front door was standing open all night. As a brother, father, husband, and son, I have no difficulty using my imagination to enter the determination and hope, the tension and terror family members and friends feel as they wait for news.
On Sunday, our pastor recruited us to pray around the clock for the woman’s safe return. From the pulpit, he asked for a show of hands from volunteers who committed to pray every hour on the hour for 36 hours. He called out every hour starting at 1 p.m. on Sunday and ending at noon on Monday and waited until someone raised their hand to pray at that exact hour.
I’ve been in church all of my life and never saw anything like that.
Only once in my life do I recall the church entering such an intense prayer “project” with such focus and organization. The young son of one of the congregation’s most loved families was ill to the point of death. We prayed with the militancy of a trade union trying to organize an open shop.
Come to think of it, I can recall another time when the church prayed like that. It was when we were raising money for a new church building. A special offering was coming up and I vaguely recall that we signed up to pray in shifts around the clock for $100,000 to appear in the collection plates on a particular Sunday.
What strikes me about these three instances is that in every one of them, the church mobilizes and organizes to pray for its own.
And that’s a good thing, the right thing.
But people go missing every day. Children die every day. People go without shelter every day. Most of these people don’t look like me and they are in places where I don’t go. They don’t look like the people who attend church with me every Sunday. I pray every Sunday with a church in Rochester Hills, Michigan. It’s a very different place with very different-looking people than Flint, Michigan. Or Detroit. Or Syria. Or Guantanamo Bay.
What I’m trying to figure out is how to pray for my own, but to also live up to the Christian calling to pray for those who are not my own. I don’t mean a generic mutter of blessing “because Jesus said so.” I mean praying for dying children, missing people, and poor people I will never know. Praying for them with as much emotion, grit, intent, and resolve as I give “my own.”
And even that is not enough. Jesus Christ said that if I really want to wear the name “Christian” well, I will pray for my enemies with as much love as I pray for my own family.
I’m trying to figure out how to do it because I don’t know. Life in my own church, family, friendships, and neighborhood demands enough already. But to be truly Christian, I must learn to go beyond common righteousness to uncommon compassion and love. To truly be the church of Christ, we must learn to “pray without ceasing” for missing persons we don’t even know.
Perhaps this is what Christ meant when he said his church would be “light” in the world: A consistent loving presence that cares and prays for enemies and strangers as it cares and prays for “its own.”
If we could learn to do this, I believe fewer people would go missing, fewer children would die, and fewer people would suffer from poverty.
As it is, should we be asking ourselves: “Who is really missing? Is it us? Is it me?”
Please pray for the safe return of Sierra Shields to her family and friends. Wherever she may be, God is with her. Pray that she will feel his presence today. And while you’re praying for Sierra, ask the Holy Spirit to nudge you toward a crisis, a stranger, or an enemy that needs your prayers just as much. Use the imagination God gave you to pray for that person or situation as if you are praying for Sierra.
Grace and Peace.