Does this not speak to your heart? Has it not happened sometime in your own life that God got you into a place so narrow (maybe between a "rock and a hard place") that you HAD to stop and open your eyes to see Him redirecting you, and opened your ears to hear Him (even if it took a talking donkey to get your attention)?!
Three times this beast of burden saw the Angel of the Lord (who was Yeshua) standing in the path to try to keep his master Balaam from going any further with the evil mandate to curse God's people, Israel; and three times Balaam ignored the donkey's attempts to stop him, and beat the poor animal! Even a dumb donkey could see the glory of God in its path, but Balaam was blinded by the temptation of earning a "handsome reward" for his divination. The story reminded me somewhat of the 2004 tsunami in Thailand when the huge working elephants strained against their chains until they were able to break them and run up to higher ground, while the humans perished in the gigantic waves!
The verses above use key terminology like "narrow path with walls on both sides" and "the Angel of the Lord stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or the left." This is where the Lord wants you and me today: on the narrow path, with our eyes and ears keenly attuned to Him. In Matthew 7:13-14 the Lord tells us, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it."
He is even warning us today through fires and storms! A fire broke out in the city of LAST CHANCE, COLORADO. What a message! Did anyone hear it? A vicious windstorm devastated the mid-Atlantic region this week and the storm is known as a derecho. The word derecho is defined as "a straight path" and a derecho storm is "a windstorm that travels in a straight path for hundreds of miles." I could not help but hear the Voice of the Lord crying through this storm, as John the Baptist cried out to thousands in his day in the words of the prophet Isaiah, "I am the voice of one calling in the desert, "Make straight the path for the Lord!"Our gracious God still gives us free will. We can choose to heed his warnings to stay on that straight path, or go off on our own way. We can choose to curse or to bless others, which will result in cursings or blessings for ourselves. We can elect to stay on the narrow road that leads to life, or go on down that broad road of self-gratitifcation and pleasures of the flesh, which ultimately leads to destruction.
I pray it does not take a talking donkey for God to get through to me! How about you?
