Talking Donkey

One passage of Scripture that always makes me smile is Numbers 22, and this is where I found myself in my daily readings this past week.  Numbers 22 has one of the most comical situations in the Bible, at least to me.  The Israelites are marching through nation after nation on their way to the promised land, and one terrified king has an idea: hire a prophet to speak to God against them.  Fast forward a bit: this prophet, Balaam, is on his way to prophesy against Israel when all of a sudden his donkey starts acting funny.  He gets mad, starts beating the donkey, and then the donkey talks to Balaam.  You know what I would have done if my donkey started talking to me?  I would have freaked out, then I would have tried to come up with something witty to say, to see if donkeys appreciated puns, which I suspect they would, just like the rest of the animal kingdom.  I would have quickly realized, however, that I couldn’t make any puns about a donkey that I’d want to actually say out loud, so I would just stand there looking dumbfounded, like Napoleon Dynamite.  Then I would have looked around to see if Shrek was nearby.  This is a sample of why God, in all His wisdom, made sure and kept me out of the pages of Scripture.

Anyway, Balaam apparently didn’t notice it was his DONKEY that was talking to him, and began to argue back.  The account ends up with Balaam going ahead and prophesying, but saying blessings rather than curses.  He says some pretty powerful stuff like “Anyone who blesses Israel will be blessed, but anyone who curses Israel will be cursed,” an idea found elsewhere in Scripture, most notably in God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12.  The king gets mad at Balaam, of course, and after a handful of other prophecies, they go their separate ways.

I want to draw a life lesson from this episode in Balaam’s life.  Do you ever get so focused on where you’re going or what you’re doing that you miss something so completely obvious in your life?  Maybe you’re “too busy” for someone when they need you most.  This brings to mind the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the priest was in too much of a hurry to help the hurt man on the side of the road that he passed by.  If we would just take the time to look around, people are there looking for someone to help them.  Maybe you’re so preoccupied with what matters to you that you fail to see what matters to others.  I recently read an illustration where a pastor finds out one Sunday morning a Sunday school teacher just got arrested, and the first thing that comes to his mind is “who on earth is going to cover his class?” It may seem silly, but we do stuff like this all the time.  We’re so preoccupied with what’s going on in our little world we miss everything outside of it.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to miss the next talking donkey in my life.  Or a chance to see a sloth get carried across the road.

Thoughts, comments?  Let me know!