Reflections on a lost girl

On Wednesday morning my facebook newsfeed featured a picture of Linnea Lomax, a pretty 19-year girl who attends College Life, the college ministry I worked with for a few years. She had been reported missing the day before and the police had started to search for her.

By Wednesday lunch time, her picture had appeared dozens of time on my computer screen. Within hours, dozens of people had joined search parties in Sacramento to look for her. It is now Saturday night, and Linnea has still not been found.

 As the week has gone by, I learned that while she is usually a happy young woman and excellent student, she had some kind of break down during her final exams. Her family found her help at an outpatient clinic, but on the day after she was discharged - she went out for lunch and never returned. It is thought that she has had a breakdown: she is likely hungry, scared, in need of medical attention - and most likely doesn't want to be found.

As I have been praying for Linnea and the MANY people I know who are searching for her, these few thoughts come to mind:  

1) This is social networking at its best.

Say what you like about facebook.... but in this instance it could well save someone's life. Within hours of Linnae's disappearance hundreds of her friends knew about it and could join in the search.

That's amazing.

 2) Those searching for Linnae are people at their best.

As I think on the dozens of people I know who are searching for Linnae for 15+ hours a day, dropping everything to search urgently for this girl - I am in awe of the love, courage, tenacity, urgency, and selflessness of their actions.

They are heroes.  

3) This is the gospel at its best.

Perhaps most striking to me of all was the realization this morning that the heroic and loving kindness of the search team is so wonderful precisely because they are doing a very godly and God-like thing. They are at their best because they are doing the kind of thing God has done, and continues to do. They are behaving like the shepherd Jesus spoke about in Luke 15:

 "3 So he told them this parable: 4  “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

 And today, in the midst of the heartbreaking, nerve-wracking search for Linnea, this parable has struck me afresh.

 Never before had I realized how much anxiety the shepherd must have felt. Just as we didn't know at first whether Linnea had been taken by malice, or lost her way, or run off intentionally.... people still sprung into action with full-scale concern. The parable doesn't tell us what happened to the sheep - and perhaps it doesn't even matter. As long as the sheep isn't home, it's in danger and the shepherd abandons everything to search.

It occurs to me afresh that it doesn't matter what the reason is that a person has wandered from God: whether they have been deceived or captured, or are "playing in another field", or whether they've stubbornly headed in another direction: as long as they're gone, the Shepherd worries and is desperately searching to have them home. Jesus coming to earth was exactly this: a full-scale search and rescue operation.

This search for the lost Linnea gives me a fresh glimpse of God's search for us when we are lost, and how great his rejoicing when we are found. What a relief! What a celebration! I am sure the feeling we will have when Linnea is found will be a picture of exactly that.

Pray with us for Linnea's safe return home.
And while you think of it, pray for the other lost ones who need to come Home too.