Looking for Donkeys

You can’t tell me the Bible doesn’t have humor. I find it in several places. This one may be my favorite. The story is found in First Samuel, chapter nine.

Donkeys were lost.

Now, donkeys are notoriously stubborn. They will stand in front of a stable window and stare and stare for hours. They need to be prodded to get going and stay going.

So, do they wander off at will? Long enough to get really lost because they think the grass is greener in the next county? Or, possibly, three counties farther? If so, the wise owner will keep them penned up.

What is going on here? What is this story about?

A man named Kish, of the tiny tribe of Benjamin, had lost his donkeys. He was either an unwise owner, or something else was going on.

Kish sent his tall, handsome son to find the donkeys. This is humorous enough already. The tall, handsome son (think: movie star, think: football player) looked in three counties, couldn’t find them, was getting hungry, and wanted to go home.

Without the donkeys.

So much for sending number one son out into the world to find his fortune. Rather, his father’s fortune, for they were his beasts of burden, essential for his labor force. Kish should have gone himself. Or was something else going on? Something even Kish couldn’t have known?

Kish’s son’s companion, one of his father’s servants, suggests they look up the prophet, the man of God, in the next town. Maybe he can tell them where the donkeys wandered off to.

Really? Does the man of God, the prophet, need to be consulted about donkeys? This seems a little ludicrous, doesn’t it? But maybe not, if something else is going on here.

The prophet is located, and his immediate message—even before asked—is: forget about the donkeys. You and your father’s house are the most desirable in all Israel.

What?

Saul—for the tall, young, handsome man’s name is Saul—responds incredulously.

What are you talking about? We are the least, the smallest!

Samuel—for the prophet’s name is Samuel—ignores Saul’s protests and orders the young man: Send your companion on ahead. I am going to anoint you king.

What kind of message was this? Israel had never had a king. But Samuel does what he said he would do—what God had given him to do: he anoints Saul king of Israel.

In the meantime, the donkeys were located, but Saul’s father no longer cared about the donkeys—where was his son?

Good question.

When it came down to the actual ceremony—the formal choosing by means of lot among all the tribes of Israel—Kish’s son, the chosen one, the tallest, most handsome man in all Israel, was missing.

He was hiding.

He had hidden himself among the baggage stored by all those tribes who had come together to see a king crowned.

Remember, he wanted to go home to eat his dinner, without the donkeys, his mission unfulfilled. Seems like a poor candidate for the important office of king. Yet here was another mission, quite a spectacular and more demanding one. Would he fulfill it?

How does God choose?

Whom does God choose?

How do we know when He has chosen?

Saul was not expecting kingship. He did not even act especially worthy of being king. Nor had he behaved in a manner to be chosen as king. His heart was on his stomach, not on honor, gallantry, or self-sacrifice. Even after Samuel carefully instructs him in his rights and duties as king, we find him—not marveling that he has been called by God and chosen for the highest office in the land and getting on with it—but in his own backyard, plowing behind the oxen.

The lost donkeys may have had their role: they got Saul out of the house, away from home and its hold on him. The lost donkeys led him, as it were, to the man of God who told him that his life was about to take a sharp turn in an entirely new direction. Saul was slow to grasp what we can read in our New Testament, namely, the concept stated by the apostle Paul: “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.”i Trying to ignore God’s call, hiding in the baggage and plowing in the field, were, at best, just a putting-off of the inevitable, for God had chosen.

Even so, Saul, as may be expected, was not a wise king. He was disobedient to the Lord’s commands. In fact, “…the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.”ii There, the humor fades. Saul is not our model. Nor does his disobedience negate the concept of God’s call on someone’s life.

So, if your donkeys are lost—if something stubborn or mystifying, something seemingly pointless, if some fruitless and disappointing search becomes long and confusing and troubling—maybe something else is going on.

Maybe not a kingdom.

Then again, Jesus had this remarkable and reassuring message for his anxious, sometimes confused followers: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” iii

God has chosen. He chooses us, with Jesus as our King, to further His kingdom.

We should marvel at this high calling, the highest in the land.

And, by His grace, get on with it.

i Romans 11:29

ii I Samuel 15:35

iii Luke 12:32