Welcome to “Between Noels: Part III”
Have you seen my alter-ego? I call her Eeyore, after the classic Pooh character: a morose, self-pitying donkey ever-expecting the worst. Think: forgotten birthdays, cold rain and sodden dejection. Thistles and limp balloons.
Lord knows, I’m a gloomster at times. Even at Christmas. When pessimism feeds on fresh dread and old disappointments, I take on the splayed, dug-in stance of those braying creatures in old westerns: mulish, stubborn, un-budgeable.
Turns out, my intel’s outdated. As are my assumptions.
Donkeys are intuitively sensitive to threat and actively protect one another.
They also safeguard livestock. Picture snapping teeth, sensational back-kicks deflecting coyotes and wolves.
Once, during Bible times, a donkey outwitted her stubborn master, who was so obsessed with his agenda that he missed the sword-wielding angel of God blocking their way! The stouthearted ass veered. Three times. Each time, her rider, blind to their shared peril, beat her with his staff. (You can read her cagey reproof in Numbers 22, roundly amen-ed by the angel.)
So here’s to God’s gentle, vigilant beasts of burden.
May I be more like them. Guide a blind herd mate to water? Oh yes. Transport what I’m called to carry without complaint? Only by grace. May I emulate the self-aware donkey, uniquely able to view all four hooves at one time, thus nimbly traverse deserts and crumbling mountain switchbacks.
Joseph’s donkey, perhaps going silver around the muzzle, carried Jesus to Bethlehem. A stranger’s donkey bore Christ through Jerusalem.
Joyous Noels and Hosannas can be lovely, optimistic, but fleeting. “Bear one another’s burdens,” Paul said, “and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
My default personality suddenly seems more promising. Still, lonesome blues will set in again, and sometimes, a feeling of doom. What do we do when heartache overwhelms hope?
Remember with me ancient Israeli families, commanded to sacrifice the firstborn male of all their flocks. The donkey, considered unclean, got a pass.
“Redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey … ”(Ex. 13:13, emphasis mine).
A sobering, deep-down amen, to the perfect Lamb, once and for all sacrificed, in our place.
Friends, how has someone helped shoulder your burden lately?
Donkey Photo by Luis Palicio on Unsplash
Lamb, in enclosure Photo by Daniel Sandvik on Unsplash