Bartolomé de las Casas and the Forgotten Flock

In 1514, a Spanish priest named Bartolomé de las Casas stood in his church on the island of Hispaniola and read the words of Ecclesiasticus: "The bread of the needy is their life; he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood." He looked out at the congregation — conquistadors who called themselves Christians — and something broke open inside him.

For years, de las Casas had watched these men grow fat on the labor of the Taino people. They claimed the land, seized the food, muddied the water with mining runoff, and trampled what remained. The indigenous people — starving, sick, dying by the thousands — had no shepherd to speak for them.

So de las Casas became one. He crossed the Atlantic fourteen times, petitioning King Charles V, writing his Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, and standing before courts that did not want to listen. He bound up what he could. He searched for the scattered. He named the fat sheep by name and called their cruelty what it was.

This is the heart of Ezekiel 34. The Almighty declares, "I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them." God is not a passive deity watching from a distance. He seeks the lost, binds the injured, strengthens the weak — and He judges those who shove the vulnerable aside to feed themselves. The Good Shepherd does not merely comfort. He also confronts.