The Donkey Who Saw the Angel

There was once a king named Balak, and he was afraid.

You know how it feels to be afraid of someone bigger than you. Your tummy goes tight. You want to hide. That was King Balak. He looked out and saw God's people, more of them than he could count, and his heart shook inside him.

Long before, when Abraham was an old man with no children, God had taken him outside his tent to count the stars and promised him a family just as many. Now here that family was, camped at the edge of Balak's land, and the king could not count them either.

So the king did a wicked thing. He sent for a man named Balaam, a man famous for his words. "Come," said the king. "Come and curse those people for me. Say bad words over them. Make them small. And I will pay you piles of silver."

A curse is wishing harm on someone with all your might.

So someone powerful was trying to curse God's people. And the people did not even know.

But God knew.

Balaam climbed onto his donkey and rode off to do the bad thing. And the donkey, plodding along, suddenly stopped, right in the middle of the road, because the donkey saw something Balaam could not see.

An angel stood in the way, shining, with a sword.

The donkey turned aside, and Balaam hit her. The donkey pressed against the wall, and Balaam hit her again. The donkey lay down flat in the road. And Balaam was so angry.

Then God did a wonderful, funny thing. He opened the donkey's mouth, and the donkey spoke.

"Why are you hitting me?"

And then God opened Balaam's eyes too, and he saw the angel and the shining sword for himself. He fell on his face in the dust. All this time the little donkey had been keeping him safe, and he never even knew.

"Only say the words I give you," said God.

So Balaam went up on the high hill, where the king was waiting, rubbing his hands for the curse. Balaam opened his mouth, and out came a blessing.

"How good they are! How loved! Like gardens beside the river, like trees God planted with his own hands."

The king was furious. "Curse them!" he cried. Balaam tried again, and out came another blessing, warmer than the first. Again and again the king begged for a curse, and every time, God turned it in Balaam's mouth into love.

Because no one can curse what God has blessed, not for all the silver in a king's treasure room.

And then Balaam said the strangest thing of all. He looked far, far ahead, past the hills, past the years, and he saw something coming.

"I see him," he said. "But not now. A star will rise out of God's own family."

Balaam could not see the face of the one he spoke of. But far down the road, on a cold night, a star would shine over a little town, and wise men would follow it to a baby: the very Star God promised here, on this hill, through a frightened man's trembling mouth.

When someone powerful wants to harm you, God is already standing in the road, in the place you cannot see yet. He stood there for his people that day, because he had made them a promise. And he kept on keeping it, step by step down all the years, to the night that star rose.