To hope or not to hope - that is the question

You sometimes see them on lampposts, sad, faded, weatherbeaten pleas for help finding a lost pet. Posters from months ago, are they still searching? If not when did they stop, and how do you decide when to let go of hope?

And what about when it is not a pet but a runaway teen, or a missing pensioner...?

In one of the villages I work in the searches have gone on – crowds of volunteers turning out day after day. But when everywhere has been searched, every stone turned, every shed checked, when the regular rhythms of life call out – then the searchers go home. What happens next?

Logic may say hope is gone, but that kind of grief seems wrong, like giving up on someone before it is absolutely certain. Yet it has to be faced, and somehow life for everyone else has to go on, but how? And the community effectively has to ask if it is okay to smile or laugh at things again, whilst living a life that still looks over its shoulder, alert to any clues to the mystery.

But according to the charity Missing People an estimated 250,000 people go missing in the UK each year. Some are like our local experience – where confusion or vulnerability appear to be a cause. Many of them are by choice, getting out of difficult situations or as a result of family tensions, but they become vulnerable by setting out without any resources or support. Often the wider community aren’t involved, family and friends have to deal with it themselves. You hear of parents staying in a house and keeping the missing teen’s room as it was, waiting for them to come home one day. But the prodigal son returning home isn’t that common - is it better to wait in endless, wishful hope, or to move on? Are there times when hope is not good for you?

Now back at work, on Monday I led a funeral, this is both a privilege and a responsibility of my role as a minister. The ritual of a formal goodbye and a time of remembering and celebrating a loved one’s life is important whether done religiously or not. Moving on without these psychological markers, moving on when nothing is definite, is incredibly difficult.

And so I will go to the village hall coffee morning tomorrow, with no answers, no promises of hope, but to sit with them as we ask our questions together.