Week of Sunday, October 25, 2026
Balaam's Donkey — Numbers 22:31
God wants to get our attention
The Big Idea
Memory Verse
"Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD."
His eyes had been closed the whole time and he had not noticed. That is the week in one line.
Conversation Starters
For the dinner table or the car line this week.
- What got most of your attention today?
- Has somebody ever been annoying you when it turned out they were helping?
- Which of the thirteen weeks stuck with you?
Family Activity · 10 min
The Dollar Test
Everybody draws a dollar bill from memory, with as many details right as they can manage. Three minutes, nobody looks. Then put a real one on the table and compare. Nobody gets it, and grown-ups do not do better than children. Then the actual question: what else have you seen ten thousand times and never once looked at?
Pray Together
God, I do not want you to have to do something ridiculous to get my attention. Help me be paying attention.
What We Did Sunday
We learned that God wants to get our attention. A donkey talks, which is the part everybody remembers — and the lesson was careful not to make Balaam a villain for missing what she saw.
What they learned Sunday
The donkey saw it three times before he saw it once
A king had hired Balaam to speak against the Israelites. On the road an angel stood in his way with a drawn sword — and Balaam walked straight at it. His donkey did not. She swerved into a field, then crushed his foot against a wall, then lay down underneath him, and he hit her all three times. Then God let her speak, and she asked him what she had done to deserve it. The lesson was careful about something here and it is worth repeating: it does not say Balaam was stupid or wicked. It says he was not paying attention, and that God was willing to do something ridiculous to change that.
- Who saw the angel first?
- What did Balaam do each time she stopped?
- What would it take to get your attention?
Chaplain America
Three times. She saw it three times.
Sunday night
Numbers 22:31
Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, with his drawn sword in his hand. And he bowed down and fell on his face.
Around the table
This Sunday: a donkey talks, and that is not the strangest part.
If an animal in this house could talk for one minute, which one, and what would it say about you?
He walked past an angel three times. Standing in the road. Holding a sword. Three times.
What is something you have walked straight past without seeing?
Nothing to prepare tonight. Last Sunday of the quarter tomorrow.
Today they learned that God wants to get our attention — and the lesson refused to make Balaam a villain for missing what his donkey saw.
Who saw the angel first?
The donkey saw it first every time. She swerved, she crushed his foot, she lay down — each one of those was her steering around something he could not see. Every time, he hit her.
Has somebody ever been annoying you when it turned out they were helping?
What actually has your attention? That is the week's real question, and it is aimed squarely at screens.
What got most of your attention today?
Thirteen weeks: a garden, a flood, a promise, a laugh, a coat, a basket, a sea, a mountain, a calf, some grapes, and a donkey. Last one of the quarter.
Which one stuck with you? Go round. Nobody may say "I do not know."
This week's mission
Put it down first
Once a day this week, when somebody says your name, put down whatever is in your hand before you answer. Not after. Before. It is a smaller thing than it sounds and it is harder than it sounds.