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There’s a bit of nostalgia in today’s readings for me.

As a very young reader, perhaps a four or five year old, I was given a simple picture book which told the Old Testament story of Balaam and the talking donkey. I soon grew beyond the book and its pictures but the message stuck with me long after the book had been discarded.

God can and does and will use any one and any thing to get through to me.

Fifteen hundred years after Balaam the donkey has a noble role as an affordable means of transport for Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, their longer journey to and from Egypt with their baby, and carrying Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

The simple Balaam story packs a lot into a few verses: God trying to speak to Balaam with Balaam unable to hear, God putting the angel messenger in the path of Balaam and his donkey, the donkey stopping because he could see the angel when Balaam could not, Balaam beating the donkey – three times, and God enabling the donkey to speak to Balaam who then gradually came to hear the Word of the Lord and being called a “man with far-seeing eyes”.

And perhaps that’s what it means to have far-seeing eyes: to live every moment expecting God to use any one and any thing to get through to me.

Wha+++