A student at the college where I work has been missing since Thursday. I’m asking you all to pray that he is found soon.

He’s 18 years old and has simply disappeared. It’s scary and it’s sad, and I’m not even family…I don’t even know him.

In the midst of this I am encouraged because of the loving community at the college. On the website they have created a page where you can post your notes and prayers for him and his family. I was reading through them and I noticed a prayer from one of my students for this young man.

That struck me in a way that made me tear up.

When I say “my student” I’m talking about one of my nontraditional students that goes to school on a different campus and has no contact with our traditional undergrad students.

It reminded me that at my College, where we may not all be family and friends, we actually ARE family and friends.

The community that can created in the face of adversity is breathtaking and empowering. It’s also comforting to know that people that I don’t know—that this young student doesn’t know—care so very much.

It reminds me of something that Albus Dumbledore says in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:

Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

The missing student and my student are connected only by a school, but in this instance their differences mean nothing and it’s that one small similarity that is so important in this moment.

Often times I am tempted to set up a camera to see what Dexter does all day while Dave and I are at work. Although sometimes the evidence is enough for us to figure it out.

Snot on the front window: Guarding, obviously. One ferocious bark and the passerby walking past the front of our house keeps his distance.

Fur on the furniture: Being bratty. He knows he’s not allowed on the furniture, but there are times when he determines that he has just enough right to the couch as we do.

Garbage on the floor: Raging. There seems to be a time when he knows that we should be home, and if we’re ever late, he goes on a rampage through the trash can.

Barf in the kitchen: He went on said rampage a little early and ate something bad. It’s in the kitchen because we’ve trained him not to puke on carpet (yet we can’t keep him off of the couch????).

But most of the time there’s nothing except an imprint on his dog bed and his bone nearby. I think he mainly just lays there wishing we would hurry home.

Poor guy.

If you set up a camera to spy on your animals, what do you think you’d find?