Remember what used to happen to the teenage girl from church who got pregnant? Maybe you don’t, because you never heard about it. She just disappeared. Maybe to live with an aunt out of state. Then a year, or two later, she’d reappear and life went on as if nothing happened. There was a girl in my senior class who “disappeared” just months before graduation. There were rumors of course, but nothing was every said publicly.
 
That’s the way it used to be in the church when a family was in crisis. If others found out, the family was given judgmentfreely rather than grace. When we find ourselves in crisis, our first thought is often, “What will everyone think?” or “Who knows about this?” We do all we can to cover up the problem, deal with it quietly on our own, and then move on.