This week’s theme is “Jesus Teaches.”

Sometime around the year 1050, an Augustine monk named St. Bernard de Menthon founded a

monastery in the Alps along a route between Italy and Switzerland. Six-hundred years later, the monks

at the time got some large watchdogs. I learned all this from an article in Smithsonian Magazine. Both

the monastery and the ensuing dog breed were named after the original St. Bernard.

Servants accompanying travelers discovered that these dogs were skilled at finding people buried in

snow, and thus the dogs became search and rescue specialists. One dog named Barry saved at least 40

people, and the last documented St. Bernard dog rescue occurred in 1897. (Contrary to what Looney

Toons taught me in the 1970’s, the little liquor barrels strapped under the dogs’ collars was just legend

and did not happen).

If I were a stranded, freezing traveler in the Alps in the 1800’s, I would take some comfort in knowing

that some of these remarkable dogs might be coming to find me. If I were stranded today, I’d take some

comfort in modern search and rescue teams with access to Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites

and helicopters. And we would all want to participate in a search for someone or something important

to us.

What man among you, who has 100 sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open

field and go after the lost one until he finds it? When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his

shoulders, and coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with

me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ (Luke 15:4-6 HCSB)

A lost sheep is one thing, but a lost heart is something else.



I am the good shepherd. I know My own sheep, and they know Me, as the Father knows Me, and I

know the Father. I lay down My life for the sheep. (John 10:14 HCSB)

When we were all lost souls, the Good Shepherd laid His life down for us. If we find ourselves separated

from Him now, it’s because we are the ones who wandered. He won’t stop looking for us even now, but

the best thing for the sheep is to just always stay close.

By Mark Stuart

Mark is the husband of Laura, father of Shelby and Jacob, and father-in-law of Bailey.