May 6

Balaam’s Donkey

             Then the angel of the Lord went ahead, and stood in a narrow place, where there was no way to turn either to the right or to the left.  When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, it lay down under Balaam; and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he struck the donkey with his staff.  Then the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”  Balaam said to the donkey, “Because you have made a fool of me! I wish I had a sword in my hand! I would kill you right now!”  But the donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in the habit of treating you this way?” And he said, “No.”  Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road, with his drawn sword in his hand; and he bowed down, falling on his face.  The angel of the Lord said to him, “Why have you struck your donkey these three times? I have come out as an adversary, because your way is perverse before me. The donkey saw me, and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away from me, surely just now I would have killed you and let it live.”

Numbers 22:26-33

A little bit of context.  The Israelites had moved into the promised land, sweeping through the people who had lived there before.  One of the nations on their southern border was Moab.  Moab’s king saw how powerful the Israelites were and knew that if they turned their attention south, he would not stand a chance.  So he decided to commission a curse on the people.  He contacted Balaam, a foreign prophet who performed blessings and curses for a fee, from a small community near Egypt and asked him to journey north for a contract.

As Balaam set out, his donkey was acting odd.  Once it veered off the road and into a field.  It received a beating for that.  Once it turned into a vineyard wall, scraping itself and Balaam’s leg.  It received a beating for that.  Finally, in one particularly narrow passage, it just lay down and refused to move.  It was receiving a particularly savage and profanity-laced beating for that offense when God allowed it to speak to its master.

Scripture does not record that Balaam was shocked when words started coming out of his donkey’s mouth.  My guess is that he was just so mad that he had lost all reason and only later would he reflect on how amazing this interaction was.  As he was talking with the beast, suddenly he saw the angel of God standing with drawn sword, ready to strike.  It was revealed that the donkey had seen the angel two times earlier and that if it had not acted, Balaam would have been killed on the road.  His donkey, who Balaam was so mad at for interrupting his plans, had actually been the thing that saved the prophet’s life. 

The angel allowed Balaam to continue but told him that he could only speak what God gave him to speak.  Balaam ended up speaking blessings on the Israelites multiple times even though the king of Moab commissioned him to curse the people.  Balaam knew the power of God.

Sometimes our biggest frustrations are actually God getting in the way of our plans in order to send us down a better path.  I worked at the Sears warehouse for a couple of years and was in line to move into some senior management positions.  However my online application kept getting lost.  Twice I submitted the electronic forms to be considered for promotion and twice they disappeared.  The local store manager could only shrug and say that there was nothing that he could do without the digital files and he encouraged me to submit them again.  A few days later I received a message from a local non-profit saying that they were looking for a director and wondering if I would be interested…and so began my journey into non-profit management.  I don’t know for sure that it was God that caused my applications to be lost, but the timing is striking and there are ways that I have grown in this profession that would not have been possible in retail.

Sometimes the struggles and frustrations that we have with our jobs or our churches or our children’s schooling or their therapy plans are God closing obvious doors in order to open new possibilities for us.

A moment to reflect:

Where is your greatest source of frustration at the moment?  Take a little while to ask God if this is His doing and whether there is a different path that He has for you to take.