I have to be honest - I didn't take this passage seriously until I taught it to a skeptical teenager who asked: why is a donkey more spiritually perceptive than a prophet? That question stopped me cold.
Balaam is a genuine prophet of God. Yet three times he misses what his donkey sees - an angel blocking the path. The donkey responds to spiritual reality that Balaam is blind to. What does that say? That spiritual perception isn't automatically guaranteed to prophets. That even the chosen and gifted can be blinded by greed, by commitment to a wrong direction.
Balaam wanted the money Balak offered him. More, he wanted to please a powerful king. So his spiritual eyes became blind to the angel literally standing in his way. His donkey, operating on pure animal instinct perhaps, or perhaps operated on by God's own opening of perception, saw what he could not see.
I work in a field where the money is good and the recognition is substantial. I've noticed my own capacity for spiritual blindness when those things are on offer. I need voices - sometimes even non-spiritual voices - that can see what I'm missing. The passage suggests that God will provide those voices if we're willing to listen. A donkey, if necessary.
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