He Lost a Donkey and Became a King

Who are we to determine what is a “good thing” or a “bad thing” in the eyes of the Lord. That is my favorite thing to say to bring perspective to any situation, because of the truth in the statement. If God is sovereign, and He is. And if God is good, and He is, who are we to look at even the percieved bad things in our lives and see them as such.
There is free will in the world. People sin and this presence of sin in the world causes evil things to happen that God does not like, but He allows it anyway because He sees us with such value and respect that He gives us the option to choose, even when our choices don’t result in the doing of His will.

Even though we have the power to choose and to allow evil with our choices, God is still sovereign and can make good out of our choices that have resulted in bad.

One of my favorite verses is in psalm 139: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

Even the darkest and hardest things that we can perceive actually have the ability to be bathed in light when seen through the eyes of the Father. During our lifetime we can only see things with such a finite and human perspective. What does it look like to be aware of the overwhelming and incomprehensible knowledge of the Lord and actually TRUST that His hand is over our lives?

A friend asked me this question recently while I was struggling with something; a question that should be asked of each of us often: “do you actually trust the Lord?”

Do I? If I’m sitting in uncertainty, fear, or confusion, am I trusting in the Lord? Those are not the fruits of someone trusting in the Lord.

Currently I have been reading through the old testament book of 1 Samuel. The book basically provides a lot of historical context to the history of Israel and the Lords hand in it. What happened was that there was a Benjamite boy named Saul. He was the son of a man named Kush, who was of high standing.

One day they are just living their daily life, whatever that looked like for a man at that time, and a wrench gets thrown in their plans. Kish’s donkeys go missing and he sends his son Saul and one of their servants to go find them.

What a frustrating situation this must have been for Saul. There were no addresses, there were no cell phones, there was certainly no animal control. Among miles of fields and woods his donkeys could have literally been anywhere, going to search for them certainly would not have been fun.

In fact, after searching through a few towns, Saul gets tired and proposes quitting and going home. In that moment, his servant gets a great idea to stop in the town they are in and search for a known man of God there who may be able to lead them the right direction.

The man this servant was talking about was a priest named Samuel. Little did they know that just the day before, God had revealed to Samuel that a Benjamite man would be brought to him who would be made king.

Long story short, Sauls life gets interrupted when he has to go look for some donkeys, he meets a man who immediately welcomes him in and has been waiting for him, and about a week later he becomes the King of Israel. (1 Samuel 9-10)

Dang.

What if he had never gone after the donkeys?

As I read this passage it reminds me to lead a life of interruptability. This word reminds me that there is so much more going on than what I can determine with my own eyes. Our lives our filled with the potential for divine appointments. What if we viewed the events in our lives, even the ones that don’t bend to our own tentative wills, as potentially Kingdom impacting events.

What if we view an exploding tire as a chance to meet the person who is going to help us change that tire. What if we have plans to do our own thing and then we get an invitation from someone we don’t expect? How do we view our lives? A series of frustrating and annoying interruptions, or a series of divine appointments?

Living life in Pogradec, Albania I have a really cool opportunity to be interrupted. A huge part of our ministry is just going out into the town, living life and meeting people. Sharing the light of Jesus in the places we find ourselves. We have no set schedule here, we get to determine it ourselves. Every morning I wake up and in my head I plan out what I think my day might look like. It usually ends up way different than I thought it would.

I pray that my eyes don’t rest on my own agenda but on Gods. It can be difficult to determine what is the will of God and what is not, but am I at the very least able to change my plans in order to love someone well?

In a situation where you cannot perceive the goodness in front of you, do you trust that the Lord is actually good? Do you trust that the Lord is actually sovereign?

“Our God is in the heavens, and He does as He wishes.” -Psalm 115:3