More Than Conduits

The agonizing twenty-second bray disputed his incessant kick.  Gaudy grey-haired stubbornness planted its footed faith on the rocky ground.  Mindless beast!  The sun-baked little seer fumed and ranted, kicked and abused his vehicle.  Ee-e-e-yo-o-ore! in another twenty second bellow and he was hurled into the vineyard wall.  “Ooo-a-a-aw!”  His left side winced under the weight of the beast; a foot pinned between it and the wall.  His right foot struck up behind the asses ear.  Profanities and hysterical hollers reverberated a vocal canal at least a mile ahead of the quirky scene.  The beast straightened and moved on.

A few hundred feet… .Thunk!  The party of two descended suddenly unto the dry earth.  The obedient animal could go no further.  The blood shot eyes of the seer squinted at his dumb companion in disbelief. “Fool!  Fool!  Fool!” He picked up his ousted body and took hold of a viney branch proceeding to whip her.  The ass hurled bewildered eyes at her master, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”  (Numbers 22:22-28)

My finger tips hover over the alphabetized ivory MacIntosh keys and I consider my powers.  Words are spelled and positioned to beguile the interested reader.  Songs, plays, articles, speeches and books are all written.  Messages are manufactured and presented in powerful words.  As my fingertips hover I realize that this power is not my greatest gift.  To study, learn and apply; to overwhelm audiences with artistry and recall God’s story for another generation… .a great gift, but not the greatest.  We are more then conduits.

From the mouths of asses and kings, from the pens of peddlers and prophets, words have addressed, assessed and rearranged our very hearts.  It is both wonderful and fearful.  God has granted humanity to share and re-share His thoughts in vocals and pages.  Yet, although such an honor, these thoughts are also written in His starry heavens and can be spoken by the dumbest creature among us.  He is able to conduct His message through any inanimate thing.

I consider, my great gift in this life is not to be His conduit.  Prophet, priest or king; painter, politician, or literary poet; preacher, healer or demon-chaser…. .or perhaps just an ordinary ass.  Every mouth is capable of proclaiming His message.  Every hand capable of recalling His works in written words.  Every anointed conduit may drive a disease or contaminated spirit away, however… .this is not our glory nor our eternal guarantee.  Asses will not inherit the kingdom…  

We have the guarantee that rests in His covenantal word, not ours.  Though I speak and write with these tongues, I rejoice, not that I am His conduit, but that He is my witness to what has been eternally written by His hand.  “…Do not rejoice… .that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven,” Luke 10:20.