The Search That Stopped a City

In March 2018, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway wandered away from his grandmother's backyard in Craven County, North Carolina, and disappeared into dense, freezing woods. Temperatures dropped below twenty degrees that night. Search teams mobilized within hours — not just local police, but FBI agents, Marine Corps volunteers from nearby Camp Lejeune, and hundreds of civilians who drove from across the state to walk shoulder-to-shoulder through thickets of briar and swamp.

For two days, they found nothing. Officials urged people to go home. Nobody left.

On the third day, a woman heard faint crying tangled in the wind. Rescuers fought through a quarter-mile of thorns to reach Casey, wrapped in vines, shivering but alive. When the paramedic lifted him from the bramble, the boy whispered, "I want my mommy." The cheer that erupted from those woods carried across the county.

Nobody criticized the search. Nobody said, "You have other grandchildren — move on." Nobody calculated the cost of helicopters and overtime. A child was missing, and everything else could wait.

Jesus told the Pharisees that the Almighty is exactly this relentless. The Good Shepherd doesn't file a report and hope for the best. He leaves the ninety-nine, crashes through the thorns, and doesn't stop until He finds the one shivering in the dark. And when He does, all of heaven erupts — not with relief, but with uncalculated, extravagant joy.