Searching for the Donkeys (Ordinary Time - Day 25)

1 Samuel 9:1-14

There's a man from the tribe of Benjamin named Kish. He has a son named Saul. Kish loses some of his donkeys, and tells Saul to take one of the servants and go look for them. They search high and low, but have no luck. Saul tells the servant that they've searched enough, and should go back before Kish starts worrying about them. But the servant tells Saul to hold on because there's a holy man in the town they're near. He says that they can go see this man and he'll tell them where to go to find the donkeys. 

So, they climb the hill entering into town and run into some girls getting water at the well. Saul asks the girls where they can find the holy man. They direct them where to go, and as they are walking to their destination, they run into Samuel.

Samuel, if you recall, has just been uninvited by the leaders of Israel to lead. They ask him to give them a king - a dictator. So Samuel is out head hunting, looking for a leader fit to be a king, and he crosses the path of a guy looking for some donkeys.

Saul is described as handsome, young, and standing head and shoulders above the crowd.

What Saul and the servant don't know about the holy man is, he's already got something in store for Saul. He already knows where the donkeys are, but also has some information for Saul that will change his life forever. Saul's just looking for some lost donkeys. He has no idea who Samuel is, but is seeking directions on where to go. 

Sometimes, we're looking for one thing and we don't even know that something way bigger than we could ever imagine is in the process. The one thing we were looking for turned out to be a great thing beyond our wildest dreams. 

I got sober because I was sick and tired of going to jail, losing my friends, and living in misery. My idea of sobriety had nothing to do with recreating life, finding a God I'd never known before, or creating a whole new group of friends who would change my life. I was searching for how not to drink, and I found a radically new life full of adventure.

Sometimes we search for one thing, and find something greater than we could have imagined. 

We are all on journeys to find something. We take whatever avenues seem best. Some of us go to school, some of us climb the ladders at work, some of us take vows of poverty, and some of get into politics. Whatever it is we are doing, there are people and events in the process that are pointing us in the right directions. Someone or something has already put the right people in the right places to show us where to go. 

In this story, if Saul would have given up the search for the donkeys, he wouldn't have run into Samuel. If the servant wouldn't have spoken up and told Saul to try out this one more thing, they wouldn't have crossed Samuel's path. If Kish hadn't lost his donkeys, Saul wouldn't have met Samuel. 

We look at the places we are in life, or the places we're heading, and trace back through all the events that happened to get us where we are now. We can see that those small, insignificant events and conversations were actual road markers for getting to where we are now. It's almost as if it was too impossible to be drawn out by ourselves. As we trace back the chronology of how we got to where we are today, we find that there were road markers we never planned on paying attention to until they happened.  

We are each destined for greatness. Our job is to not give up searching for the donkeys. We don't have to look to the skies looking for cloudy pictures, or play the lottery, or try to manufacture our own results. The results will be taken care of. Our job is to keep doing what we need to do right now. The right people and right events will happen as we keep taking one step at a time. What we're searching for is but a glimpse of the greatness that is in store. Just don't give up searching for the donkeys. 

Today's Action: Think back a few years. Try to trace the back all the people and events that came into play to get us where we are today. Were there things that happened that we weren't expecting or planning to get us here? Are we still searching diligently, or have we given up on the donkeys?