The Search Party on Ridgeline Trail

In March 2019, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway wandered away from his grandmother's backyard in Craven County, North Carolina, and disappeared into dense woodland. Temperatures dropped below freezing that night. Search teams of over six hundred volunteers fanned out across tangled brush and creek beds, calling his name into the darkness.

For two days, helicopters circled overhead. Neighbors who had never spoken to each other walked shoulder to shoulder through briars. A retired Marine drove four hours just to join the search. Nobody talked about the ninety-nine children safe in their homes that week. Every conversation, every prayer, every flashlight beam was aimed at one missing boy.

On the third evening, rescuers heard a faint cry coming from a thicket of thorns near a creek. They found Casey tangled in underbrush, cold and scared but alive. The rescue commander later said the sound that broke out among the searchers was unlike anything he had ever heard — grown men weeping, strangers embracing, a spontaneous cheer rolling through the woods like thunder.

Jesus told the Pharisees that heaven erupts with exactly that kind of joy — not over the ninety-nine who never strayed, but over the one who was lost and found. The Good Shepherd doesn't run a cost-benefit analysis. He leaves everything, crashes through the thorns, and doesn't stop until He brings that one trembling lamb home. And all of heaven throws a party.