One bright, sunny day in Jerusalem, a young donkey was tied next to his mother beside a house. As the young donkey looked around, he began to think about the time when he would become a beast of burden like his mother and carry heavy loads for long distances. He noticed some chickens scratching for food near him and he thought to himself, “I wish I were a chicken instead of a donkey. A chicken just walks around all day finding food and living a life of ease.” Then a little boy passed by carrying a cage with two doves in it. The young donkey watched as the doves shuffled in the cage and he thought, “If only I could have been a dove, all they do is stay in a safe cage and coo. A little boy even brings their food to them.”

As the morning passed, the donkey continued to daydream about being anything except a donkey, a lowly, unimportant donkey. Then, two men came up beside him and untied him. He thought to himself, “Now I must be getting ready to start my life of hard work and carrying heavy burdens.” Slowly, the two men walked towards the edge of the city until they were just outside the city gates. There, they met several other men, standing about and talking.

Suddenly, one of the men got up onto his back. He didn’t like it much, but thought to himself, “This isn’t too bad” and they started back into the city. After only going a short way, people began to surround him and began to talk. He just couldn’t understand what was going on. After going a little further, men started taking off their coats and laying them down in from of him. The ones that did not have coats cut off branches and laid them down in the street in front of him. He thought to himself, “ I must be very important for people to treat me like this. They are making sure I do not stumble and fall or even bruise my hoof. This is really wonderful, I have never seen a chicken or a dove treated like this.”

As he went on, the crowd grew larger and larger, with more talking and more coats laid in front of him. “How wonderful this all is” he thought himself. After a little while longer, they stopped and the crowd gathered close around him. “I wonder what they are going to do now?” he thought as the man on his back gently got off and started walking away. The crowd followed the man and the young donkey was left standing alone. “What is going on?” the donkey wondered, “Here I am! Come back!”

Suddenly, he realized that the people were following the man that had been sitting on him and that all of this was for him. The crowd, the talking, the coats, everything. As he stood there alone he thought, “I must know his name.” On the road beside him passed two men. One turned to the other and said, “There he is! There is Jesus!”

“Jesus! Jesus! That is his name! I must remember that name! When I am with him, I treated like a king with the world making a path for me and my burdens seem light! But when I am alone, I am just a beast of burden for the whole world! If I could only live forever with Jesus!” he thought.

ãCopyright Jim Harmon

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