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
