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As the search for the missing Malaysian airline enters its third week, the grief of those waiting seems never-ending. Yet many among the families of those on board refuse to abandon hope, clinging desperately to the possibility that somehow, somewhere, their loved ones have survived. Until they know otherwise, they’ll expect the hunt to be continued, however great the odds against a happy outcome. They need to know what’s happened, because the not knowing is a particular agony. It’s an experience shared by many people whose lives have been shattered when someone has vanished suddenly without trace. I have a friend whose cousin failed to return to his university hall 48 years ago, and the family have never seen or heard from him since; my friend still searches for him, still looks for clues, for explanations. And he encounters lots of others driven by a similar passion. I’ve never forgotten sitting in a bullet-scarred room in El Salvador and listening to the stories of mothers, wives and children of men who’d disappeared after being snatched by soldiers or by paramilitary groups working for the government. Young children were being taken at the same time, and only this week one family were appealing again for news of two daughters they’ve not seen not seen for more than thirty years. The longing for reunion, and the need to know, never go away. Marion Partington has written powerfully about the intensity of the agony. Her sister Lucy was lost for two decades before she was found to be one of Fred West’s victims; she describes the pain of this period as something ‘no one speaks about because there are no words or because the words will crack open the pain…Life goes on, but only life that pretends, hides in the silence, that magnifies the pain.’ Some understandably become too weary, and settle for making what they can of a life which will always have a huge unresolved mystery near its centre. For others the searching now defines who they are: they will persevere come what may, drawing strength from wells of memory, of shared love, of a commitment to seeing the truth revealed and justice done. As they do this, they’re reflecting, I believe, the perseverance of a God who never gives up. Jesus told three stories about lostness - a shepherd who looks for one missing sheep; a woman who sweeps her whole house to find the single coin she’s mislaid; and a rich farmer who loses one son to a life of reckless indulgence and another to the misery of grudging self-righteous respectability: he grieves over both of them, and wants both back. I think that a God who is always looking for the lost is even now embracing those waiting families who need to know, and sustaining those who still search.