SENTINEL WATCH April 10, 2006 Issue

IF SOMEONE DISAPPEARS

CHANNING WALKER

WE ARE NOT WEAPONLESS . I remind myself of this each time a new headline screams of a missing child or young adult. Innocent children, loving parents, caring citizens, are not without resources. They are not without powerfully effective armament that can be brought to the front to recover the missing. They have the weaponry of prayer, the armament of spiritual understanding. And there is no discounting prayer's importance, as people of faith refuse to sink in a sea of despair, but instead campaign for the safe recovery of every child in need of rescue, and for the peace of mind of every distraught parent.

Consider this promise found in the Scriptures, given as God's own voice: "I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick" (Ezek. 34:16). For any parent seeking a missing child, what a powerful reinforcement! For any abducted child, bewildered and terrified, what a reassuring promise! God Himself is engaged in the seeking, in the finding, in the restoring, in the healing. Your task and mine is to awake to the realness of His promise. Then hope dawns. Fear, the enemy that threatens to make parents witless at the very moment their wits are most needed, diminishes. And every right endeavor for recovery gains the underpinning of spiritual intuition and spiritual discernment.

God, who is divine Truth, uncovers deception. Truth thwarts evil intention. Truth protects and preserves innocence. And Truth voices, in a way that cuts through even to a would be perpetrator, a message that redirects people along better paths. There is no place so remote, no mind so demented, that it could completely evade this all-penetrating voice of Truth. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The 'still, small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound. The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, 'as when a lion roareth.' It is heard in the desert and in dark places of fear" (p. 559). The more we become spiritually attuned to this voice, the more we find healing solutions for ourselves and others.