We’ve all heard how if He could use a donkey then perhaps even me. Commendable humility, but don’t stop there looking at your humility–there’s more to being His donkey than that, gloriously much more. You are His donkey as you are no one else’s. Now there’s freedom! Let no one take it from you or lay on you some other yoke. …The yoke He puts on you at ordination. You belong, then, to no other lord, no other work, than what He puts you to do, than what He does by His use of you. You instrument. You donkey. For His use, for His doing, and so, Holy Ministry. …A yoke can be bondage, but not our Lord’s. He knows His donkeys and exactly where they are as Mark tells us with vivid locatedness. He has promised to be with them whom He sends. He is not a burden who crushes them. Quite the reverse. Who’s carrying whom? Dr. Luther has faithful donkey Peter say if we drown He does too. Royal donkeys. If that got through to us we would, as Luther was wont to say, die of joy.

Norman Nagel,

In the Name of Jesus, Advent 1, 1994