Today’s Readings: Psalm 140; Numbers 22:21-38; Matthew 6:19-24; 2 Thessalonians 2:5-12; Psalm 64
A couple of days ago, I saw a piece on the news about service dogs that work with people with epilepsy. The service dogs have an amazing capacity to not only help their owners with every day tasks in the owners’ environment – they also have the ability to alert others when a seizure is coming on within their owner. This trait is nothing short of amazing. The piece reminded me that there is often more than one way of connecting with things around us. Often, we human beings aren’t fully tuned in to some of these other ways of seeing/detecting things. Today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament contains the story where a human being demonstrated his limited capacity of perception; the reading contains the story of Balaam. In that story, Balaam was traveling on his donkey when an angel from God appeared in front of Balaam in an attempt to slow Balaam down and get his attention. Balaam was completely oblivious to the angel. Thankfully, his donkey was not – the donkey veered off the path each time he saw the angel. And how did Balaam respond to the donkey’s expanded vision? Did Balaam give the donkey the benefit of the doubt and thank him? Nope. Balaam beat the donkey for not seeing things the way he did. Eventually Balaam’s eyes were opened and he saw the expanded reality. How often in our lives do we do the same thing – how many times do we become so fixated on reality as we see it that we would lash out at those who would dare to reveal different aspects of reality? Today, I would encourage you to pay attention to elements of your own surroundings to see if they might be calling you to see an expanded perception of reality. If that happens, resist your impulse to resist the insight since it doesn’t fit neatly into your preconceived box. Instead, open yourself to what it might be pointing you toward. Til next time…
A couple of days ago, I saw a piece on the news about service dogs that work with people with epilepsy. The service dogs have an amazing capacity to not only help their owners with every day tasks in the owners’ environment – they also have the ability to alert others when a seizure is coming on within their owner. This trait is nothing short of amazing. The piece reminded me that there is often more than one way of connecting with things around us. Often, we human beings aren’t fully tuned in to some of these other ways of seeing/detecting things. Today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament contains the story where a human being demonstrated his limited capacity of perception; the reading contains the story of Balaam. In that story, Balaam was traveling on his donkey when an angel from God appeared in front of Balaam in an attempt to slow Balaam down and get his attention. Balaam was completely oblivious to the angel. Thankfully, his donkey was not – the donkey veered off the path each time he saw the angel. And how did Balaam respond to the donkey’s expanded vision? Did Balaam give the donkey the benefit of the doubt and thank him? Nope. Balaam beat the donkey for not seeing things the way he did. Eventually Balaam’s eyes were opened and he saw the expanded reality. How often in our lives do we do the same thing – how many times do we become so fixated on reality as we see it that we would lash out at those who would dare to reveal different aspects of reality? Today, I would encourage you to pay attention to elements of your own surroundings to see if they might be calling you to see an expanded perception of reality. If that happens, resist your impulse to resist the insight since it doesn’t fit neatly into your preconceived box. Instead, open yourself to what it might be pointing you toward. Til next time…
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