The King Who Rode a Borrowed Donkey

Close your eyes for just a moment. Imagine you are waiting for a king to come.

What do you see?

Maybe a tall, fast horse, the kind that gallops into battle. Maybe shining armor. Maybe a sword, and soldiers marching, and trumpets so loud they hurt your ears. Maybe a king with a hard face, the kind that makes everyone afraid, so that nobody dares come close.

That is what most people thought a king should be: big and loud and a little bit scary, the sort of person who could crush anyone who stood in his way.

But long, long ago, God showed his prophet Zechariah a picture. A vision. This was the same Zechariah who had watched Joshua's filthy clothes come off and the clean robe go on. Now God had one more picture for him, and it was so gentle it could almost make you cry.

"Look!" said God. "Look, my people. Your King is coming to you!"

And the people leaned in close, the way you lean in when a story reaches its best part.

Was he riding a war-horse? No.

Was he carrying a sword? No.

God's promised King was riding a donkey.

A small, slow, soft-footed little donkey. And not even his own. A borrowed one.

A king rides a horse when he is coming to fight. He rides a donkey when he is coming in peace. So everyone who saw this King would know, deep down in their chest, that they did not have to be afraid of him.

"He is humble," said God. "He is gentle. And he is yours."

This King would not break his people. He would save them. He would take the war-horses away and snap the battle-bows in two, like dry little sticks across his knee. He would stop the fighting. And then, from one end of the wide earth to the other, he would speak one beautiful word over all the nations.

Peace.

This was a King to run toward, a King so gentle that even a small, tired, frightened child could climb right up beside him and feel completely safe.

For hundreds and hundreds of years the people held that gentle picture close. They waited. They wondered. When will he come, this peaceful King? When will we see him on the donkey?

And then, one bright morning, on the road going up to the city of Jerusalem, a man named Jesus asked his friends to fetch him a young donkey. A borrowed one. He climbed onto its back, and he rode slowly into the city while the people threw down their coats and waved their branches and shouted for joy.

The gentle King had come, exactly as soft and as kind as God had promised Zechariah all those years before.

Hold that bright morning in your mind, because further along in this book we will stand on that very road and watch it happen up close, coats and branches and all. And when the donkey's little hooves clip-clop through the gate, you will know something the crowd is only beginning to guess: this King has come to speak peace over the whole wide earth, until not one corner of it is afraid anymore.