Miracle in Missouri

In the midst of all the bad news this week, the War in Iraq, the storms in the Midwest, there was some good news.

I was so happy to hear that 13 year old Ben Ownby in Missouri who went missing last week was found alive. That would have been enough, but then the news came out about 15 year old Shawn Hornbeck. He was 11 when he disappeared four years ago. I can only imagine the joy in that home today. It has happened before that a child was found after disappearing for several years, but it is very rare. There was the case of Elizabeth Smart who was missing for nine months and there was a girl in Austria Natascha Kampusch wo was missing for eight years.

There is a lesson here. Never give up, never lose hope. Miracles do happen. New York has a sign in the subways and on the bridges and tunnels, “If you see something, say something”. That certainly applies here. These boys would not have been found now if a friend of Ben Ownby hadn’t described the white Nissan truck he saw speeding away from the neighborhood around the time of Ownby’s disappearance.

I guess we all need to be aware of our surroundings and alert to anything out of the ordinary.