Leave the 99.

So here I am, on my last day off for the summer as I work at Summer’s Best Two Weeks. I am currently sitting in a hotel lobby writing some letters, and my gaze turned to the TV screen... I have been sitting in the same spot for a few hours or so, and a story of a missing teenager has repeatedly cycled through the news programming... my heart was broken for MANY reasons:

The first is that this young girl is missing... my heart goes out to her and her family and all those who know her. I pray that she is found quickly!

But my more consuming thought is this: “What about the rest of them?”

I’m referencing the THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of missing young children... some as young as 4 or 5 that have been kidnapped from their homes and forced to kill their families and serve as either child soldiers or sex slaves in the LRA, a rebel army that once terrorized Uganda for over 20 years, and now terrorizes the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

I pictured how different our news would look if that were happening in our own country.... or even better, if instead we as a human race embraced the fact that WHERE you live shouldn’t determine WHETHER you LIVE. ...Would there be a story on each and every one of the tens of thousands of children who go missing after their families are killed? Would there be an unrelenting search party for each and every one of them?

Why should this response for a missing teenager in the U.S. look any different for a teenager who goes missing in a rural village in northern Uganda?

It shouldn’t look any different, but the reality is that it DOES.

The teenager across the world stays “missing.”... Not because the search party came back fruitless, but because she has no one to be her voice, no one to fight for her.

I’m not trying to argue that it’s the United States’ responsibility to care, pursue, and love every young child, woman, or man oppressed by injustice that they come in contact with or hear about... BUT I AM arguing that it is our responsibility as Christians.

To be a Christian means to be a FOLLOWER and DISCIPLE of Jesus. What do you think He meant when He said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take us his cross and FOLLOW ME” [Matthew 16:24]?

Thank the LORD that the boundaries between countries don’t deter His love and grace from stretching across the ends of the earth to SEEK AFTER (Isaiah 62:12) and pursue every one of us lost sheep as he took up his cross and died for us.... because His love for us isn’t about us or where we live.  

Jesus compares the pursuit of us unworthy sinners to the relationship between a shepherd and his flock of sheep, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” [Luke 15:4]

When we have been pursued in this way, the only logical and natural response is that we would GET UP AND MOVE... that we would leave the 99 to go after the 1. 

It doesn’t matter if the 1 is “halfway across the world or right next door,” or if the 1 “deserves it or not,” or if the journey will be “too hard, pricy, or messy,” or whether or not “you will receive a reward for the time spent searching,” BECAUSE IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.... it’s about pursuing others in the same selfless, unrelenting fashion that Christ pursued us.... even though our desire to mirror Christ’s pursuit will never compare to His sacrifice on the cross.

“What can we say? What can we do? BUT OFFER THIS HEART (and life) OH LORD completely to you.”

We’re motivated not out of obligation, but out of an overflowing love for our Savior who gave it ALL for NO REASON AT ALL.

Leave the 99.

Pursue the 1.

Pursue the 1- across the world, in your classroom, at work- anywhere and everywhere.

Thankful for conviction that motivates me to FOLLOW HIM more closely,

em