You think the sound of a donkey is “hee-haw”. But there is story in the Bible in which a donkey actually speaks. Is it a story? Is it a parable? Who knows.
The donkey is asking Balaam, the equestrian, why she is being beaten. The owner was indeed beating her, because he wanted to have his way and perceived his riding animal as stubborn as she three times stopped in her tracks. Actually, in the story, the donkey sees something the equestrian doesn’t see: An angel, blocking the way in order to prevent the man from making a mistake. He suddenly sees the angel, repents and listens to its message, turning around.
This story is meant to teach us something. I feel we can look at daily life as a battle with adverse circumstances, battle with what we think is an uncooperative donkey. Little things that bother us, that don’t quite go as planned – in the office, in school, in the traffic, at home. Experience teaches us that patience and joy carry the day, but how do we get there? Where do find our daily dose of kindness?
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has wonderful advice for us. She writes: „The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares.“
The potential to see the angel where before an obstacle seemed to be, is normal for spiritual sense. Love is never absent – guiding and guarding us every minute. As we yield to Love’s perspective of Life, our experience is upgraded from difficult to solution oriented, from the harsh solitude of us against the world to living with God. We are made to be cooperative ideas of divine Love.
In order to get our daily dose of kindness we have to deal with the opposition in the form of complaining, and Paul knows how to do this, here in the New International Version (Paul is writing in Greek, translations vary greatly):
„Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure,
children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.
Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.“ (Phil. 2: 14)
As we ride along through our daily affairs and learn and grow we might also remember that we ride – that there is something, which carries and supports us. With dignity and kindness we perceive ourselves as made to express the most High, divine Love. Our experience, like the one of our Biblical distant friend, has an angel standing right in front of us.
