THE wind, sweeping down from White Mesa, blew cold against the Indian boy, Hosteen Nez, as he herded his sheep and started homeward. The round, low, one-roomed hut, built of logs and plastered with mud, called a hogan, was the home toward which he was hurrying, for Hosteen Nez lived on the Reservation for the Navajo Indians; Navajo Land he often heard it called.
His face wore a troubled look when he hastily pulled aside the gay colored blanket that hung in the doorway and came into the hogan. When he had penned up his sheep in the corral he found that one was missing. Where had he lost it?
He looked about the hogan, the only home the boy had-known during his fourteen years, and it looked very pleasant and comfortable to him now. On the sheepskins, laid near the walls, the younger children were playing. His twelve-year-old sister looked up with a welcoming smile from the pretty Navajo rug she was weaving. On the ground, for the hut had no other floor, sat his mother before the fire, where a pan of hot fat was boiling. In her brown hands she was shaping a round, flat piece of dough. When she dropped it into the pan the fat sizzled and sputtered, and in a moment more she had lifted it out, brown, crisp and of delicious smell.
Eagerly Hosteen held out his hand.
“Let me have it, quick, I must go back; I have lost a sheep,” he said.
His mother reached for the coffee pot and put it where the fire was hottest. “Wait till you have had some hot coffee,” she urged him.
But he shook his head, and the blanket door swung into its place as he went out without a word, to face the cold wind. He ate his Navajo bread in quick gulps, and shivering, thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, for Hosteen Nez bought his clothes at the Trading Post and dressed like the white boys. The heavy clouds above White Mesa told him that a storm was already raging in the mountains and would soon come down the valley.
Where could that one sheep have strayed from the others? The boy was puzzled as he stumbled over the darkening trail, trying to recall the day’s stopping places. Surely not while they grazed by White Hair’s camp, for the land was too open there, he would have seen the wanderer at once. He had then led them through a narrow pass in the hills — ah, of course, the Wash! Surely it must have been in the Wash where he had taken them to drink earlier in the day.
The spring rains had been heavy and the bed of the deep, narrow Wash, usually a place of dry sand and stones, was muddy, with little pools of clear water in the hollows.
Changing his direction, Hosteen took a cross-cut over the hill. Here the wind that had quickened to a gale seemed to cut through his clothing, and flurries of sand half blinded him. Oh, if he could only find his poor lost lamb!
The clouds piled darker over the mountains. There was an occasional flash of light, followed by a heavy roll of thunder. The cold wind had given the boy a shivering body, but now his heart trembled, for he greatly feared the god of thunder. Had he not stricken down Hosteen’s brother-in-law’s cousin while the lad, during a storm, stood under a pinon tree, with his sheep huddled about him for protection? The god of thunder might now be angry with him, and he did not know what to do to appease an angry god. He longed to be at home, but a Navajo boy is not easily separated from his sheep, and so he plunged on and on toward the edge of the Wash. Unable to see any distance because of the gathering gloom and the driving sand, he paused only a moment at its edge, then digging his heels into the bank he slid swiftly to the bottom.
Here there was no flying sand to blind him, and he was partially protected from the wind. Straining his eyes through the dark, he called again and again. Then a moment’s lull in the wind, a faint bleat that only an Indian’s ear could catch, and without thought of danger to himself, Hosteen Nez was struggling toward a helpless bit of life caught in the treacherous quicksand. Experienced as he was in the ways of the desert, all his strength and skill were needed in that fight to save the lamb, but he won: and once again he struggled wearily up the sandy bank with the lamb flung over his shoulder.
As he paused to catch his breath at the top there came a new sound, and he watched, fascinated, while the gurgling waters spread over the bed of the Wash, and with a terrifying swiftness lapped steadily higher up its sides. The storm in the mountains must have been a cloud-burst, and well he knew the rain that now came driving in sheets over the valley might increase to the same violence; and the god of thunder seemed still to pursue him. It was not easy to carry the half-grown lamb, with its wet, muddy fleece in his arms, partly protected by his coat, but he knew it must have warmth soon or his labor would be in vain. In remembering its helplessness he somewhat forgot his own discomfort and fear, and struggled on.
More than two hours later, weary to the point of exhaustion, dripping, shivering, with the fear of the god of thunder still in his heart, he left behind him the darkness and storm and entered the shelter and welcome, the warmth and the cheer of the hogan.
No coffee ever tasted so good, no sheepskin was ever so comfortable as that on which the boy lay-fed, dried, rested, drowsing in the glow of the fire, and listening to the chatter of happy home voices.
Near him, in sleepy content lay the little lamb, its troubles over, its strength renewed. He watched it idly, wondering at his feeling of affection for it. Queer what a fellow would brave and endure for a little helpless animal. It was not worth much money, but somehow he liked it; he had paid a heavy price for its life. It was his before it was lost, but it was doubly his now; he had bought it back from death with the price of his own labor and strength.
Months later Hosteen Nez lounged at the counter of the nearest Trading Post. An Indian Trading Post is a good place to exchange the news from miles around. The longer one stays the more there will be to tell to eager listeners at home. The stove is warm, the display of goods hard to tum from, and today there was a leather belt, handsome with handwrought silver and studded with desert turquoise, that was very attractive. He was looking at it with covetous eyes.
The door opened. He did not look up, but knew instantly’ by the changed atmosphere it was not an Indian who entered. Glancing up he recognized the “Short Coat” —a white man who talked about the white man’s God — “a missionary,” he had heard him called by the white man who kept the Trading Post.
Hosteen Nez Found by the Good Shepherd.
The boy fell to studying the belt again. The new-corner was talking in Navajo now; what queer ideas the white man had, and how funny some of his words sounded. But what was that — a God Who sought sinful lost men as a Navajo would seek a lost sheep — “What man of you... doth not leave the ninety and nine... and go after that which is lost until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” (Luke 15:4, 54What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? 5And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. (Luke 15:4‑5).)
Hosteen Nez leaned eagerly forward, the beautiful belt forgotten. Again he felt himself facing the bitter wind; he saw the pitiful, struggling lamb in the quicksands; he felt the joy of its rescue from the rain and darkness and rushing of the waters from the mountain heights, that in a moment more would have doomed the helpless little animal.
“All we” —white men, Navajos, big men and women, boys and girls — “like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way and the Lord, hath laid on Him — Jesus Christ, God’s Son — the iniquity of us all.” (Isa. 53:66All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6).)
Perhaps we have not turned to such a bad way, but it is our own way, not God’s, and we are lost like a sheep is lost in the storm on the desert. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).)
“God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, came into the world to save sinners, and He not only found them, but He bought their safety by dying for them — giving His Own precious life for them.”
The missionary paused, his heart thrilled with the expression in the eager, open face and shining eyes of the boy who a few moments before had been lounging uninterestedly over the counter.
Hosteen Nez had always thought the white man’s God too strange to understand. But the story of such love, how easy to understand, and so good. Could it possibly be — yes, it must be — true!
Has the tender Shepherd, who that day found Hosteen Nez, found you, dear friend, whose eyes read these words?
Perhaps you are thinking, “I wish I might know He has found me, and I have found Him.” You may know. It is so simple, for a seeking Saviour and a seeking sinner are never far apart.
How You may be Found by the Good Shepherd,
If you want Jesus Christ as your Shepherd and His gift of Eternal Life — life that never ends, His Own life within you—say to Him from the depths of your heart: “Lord Jesus, I take Thee just now to be my Saviour from sin and eternal death. Make me God’s child, born into God’s own family.” This is what the Bible calls being “born again.”
If you have said these words, really meaning them, you may now add your prayer of thanksgiving which the loving Saviour is waiting to hear — “I thank Thee for hearing my prayer. I am now God’s child I know, because Thy word says: As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.’” (John 1:1212But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: (John 1:12).)
You can be sure you are one of His “sheep,” and He says to them: “I give unto them Eternal Life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand” (John 10:2828And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:28).) You are “saved” far more wonderfully than Hosteen Nez’s little lamb was saved.
Go now, and confess Jesus as your Saviour by your words and your life. For “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:99That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9).)
Read His word, the Bible, every day; talk to Him and ask and trust Him to guide you in everything, and your life will soon be joy and blessing — a delight to others and most of all to Him. F.C.N.