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Good morning.

39 years after an inquest jury decided Lord Lucan had murdered his children’s’ nanny  many others have disappeared without trace as well albeit in different circumstances. There have been the so called disappeared here in Northern Ireland many of whose families still live without closure; the children abducted, who hit the headlines from time to time and more recently, a planeload of travellers lost on their way to China.

As I was growing up there were still stories in our village about the local postman who had disappeared on his rounds on Christmas Day years earlier and those stories were to be resurrected in newspapers every decade or so thereafter. It was a matter of curiosity and fascination to readers as it combined the elements of Christmas Day, a local hostelry and talk of a body thrown into one of the empty copper mines somewhere along the beautiful Co. Waterford coast.

For his wife/widow however, it was a different story.

Each time that public interest was aroused - it was another knife in a wound that was not quite healed, a cut in the heart of this tiny lady dressed in her long black coat as she went about her daily shopping in the village moving quietly from place to place without ever finding an answer until the very day she died.

And of course she is not the only one in our world shackled to uncertainty for years on end and so it is this morning that we remember all who live with loss and desolation yet never find the answers to all their questioning and grief.

Lord we bring before you all who live with loss yet find no answer in all the passing years. Be with them now, and help them in all their confusions to cling to you our fortress and our rock.

Amen.