Not So Light Lenten Reflections

Week 5

Daniel and All the Trusts

Daniel has always been my favorite book in the Bible. Yes, I do love Psalms and Acts, but Daniel usually comes out on the top of my list. Sandwiched between the major prophets and the minor prophets, I've jokingly called Daniel the middling prophet, a concise twelve chapters, the last six heavily into prophetic visions, the first six more biographical. It's the first six I want to talk about today. It's in those early chapters that Daniel models the ability to live faithfully following God in a culture that would seem to be at odds with anyone attempting to live a godly life. Trust in God is woven in and out of those chapters, all the trusts – pet trusts, trust for a mouth, and the BIG Trust.

Daniel is one of several young men taken into captivity during the Babylonian exile. The best and the brightest of the Hebrew youth were to be trained in the Babylonian culture. Daniel and three of his friends decide to go through this on God's terms and not be dictated to by the surrounding culture. When presented with the king's food, a rich diet of meat and wine, not in keeping with the dietary laws of the Hebrew people, Daniel asks if they instead could be given vegetables and water to eat and drink. He suggests a ten day trial eating period and at the end of that time, Daniel and his three friends appear fatter and healthier that those youth who ate the king's food. They would be allowed to continue eating in a way that would be honoring to God. I speculate as to whether he had “settled in his mind not to meditate beforehand” and trusted God for the words to negotiate the new diet. It took a certain amount of trust to step out and suggest what Daniel did, as well as trusting God to give him “a mouth and wisdom” to hammer out the deal.

When King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and challenges his wise men to tell him the dream and then interpret it, they fail and the king decides to kill all the wise men, Daniel and his friends being included in the group. Daniel, speaking with “prudence and discretion,” asks to speak with the king. When the king asks him if he can make known the dream and its interpretation, Daniel replies,

No wise men, enchanters, magicians or astrologers can show the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries and he has made know to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.

Daniel sidesteps his own ideas about the king's dream and relies solely on God to give him “a mouth and wisdom” to interpret it and acknowledges as much to Nebuchadnezzar. A lot of trust there. Nebuchadnezzar pays homage to God as a result, but as impressed as he is with Daniel and Daniel's God, Neb is a slow learner...a very slow learner. It doesn't take him long to make a golden image that he commands every one must worship or be throw into a fiery furnace. Daniel himself is missing from this little drama, but his three friends refuse to bow in worship to the golden image and find themselves on the way to the incinerator. When questioned about their obstinance, they replied,

O, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

What a great picture of the three friends grappling with the BIG Trust. In the face of almost certain death, they acknowledge that they trust in a God who may save them...or may not. Either way, their God is worthy of their trust, their BIG Trust. He not only saves the three friends from the fiery furnace, but He allows Nebuchadnezzar himself to see their salvation and to see a mysterious fourth companion in the furnace, someone whose appearance “is like a son of the gods.” This causes the king to have another moment of worship of the God of the three friends.

Nebuchadnezzar has another dream, and Daniel, again, is the only one who can interpret it. While the king's first dream was about the future of his kingdom, this dream is about the king's personal future. Daniel “was dismayed for awhile, and his thoughts alarmed him.” Again, Daniel had trusted God for the interpretation, but now he had to trust God for the delivery of the interpretation. How do you tell the king that he is going to “be driven from among men”...” to eat grass like an ox” because of his pride? Nebuchadnezzar receives the interpretation, it comes to pass, and when God restores the king, he praises and extols the King of heaven...one...more...time.

After Nebuchadnezzar's death, his son has a baffling experience. Words appear on the wall during a banquet. Daniel again is called to interpret their meaning. He is promised to be clothed in purple, to have a chain of gold around his neck and be the third ruler of the kingdom. Daniel delivers the interpretation, God's judgment against the new king and a prediction of his imminent death. Despite the dire warning, the king immediate bestows on Daniel what he has promised. That very night, the new king is killed.

Now at this point in Daniel's story he seems to have collected some pet trusts. One could say that surviving and thriving in exile in the Babylonian culture has become a pet trust bordering on a superpower. Daniel found favor in altering the food menu for he and his friends. He had saved himself and his friends by trusting God to use him to know and interpret Nebuchadnezzar's first dream. He somehow completely missed getting throw into the fiery furnace. He successfully delivered an unpleasant interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's second dream. A more disturbing interpretation to Neb's son gave him robes of royalty, gold and a powerful position. I can't pretend to know how Daniel felt about these events, but it would appear that his trusting of God blessed him in exile time and again. But the BIG Trust was waiting for him around the corner.

Daniel's success in Babylon was not without its critics. Because Daniel “became distinguished above all”, his enemies were jealous and sought a way to destroy him. Because “no error or fault was found in him,” they knew that to bring him down would somehow have to involve a “connection with the law of his God.” Through some legal wrangling, an irrevocable law was put into effect that stated only the king, Darius, could be worshiped. The penalty for breaking the law was to be thrown into the lions' den. Daniel, of course, did what he had always done, getting down on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before the God he trusted, much to Darius' dismay. Powerless to change the law, Darius, seeing Daniel off to the lions' den, can only say, “May your God, whom you serve continually deliver you!” Of course, God does. After spending a sleepless night, Darius hurries to see Daniel's fate the next morning. Daniel is alive and well and in one piece much to the king's relief. God had sent his angel and shut the lions' mouth. The scripture continues,

So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.

“...because he had trusted in his God...”

We all have our fiery furnaces, our lions' dens experiences, possibly not as dramatic or as deadly as in the Book of Daniel, but just as challenging. Can we build on the trust we have experienced in the little things to learn to lean upon God in the big things? Can we trust in God to give us a mouth and wisdom, to show us how to step aside and let God have His way with us? We can look at Daniel and see him as a model for a life of trust so when we have come through our fiery furnace or out of our lion's den, it will be seen that we trusted in our God.

 

Not So Light Lenten Reflections

Week 4

What a Mouth...

If you are a regular reader of the Bible, or, perhaps, have a favorite devotional you have read repeatedly over the years, you may have experienced the phenomenon I'm about to talk about. It's the strange thing that happens periodically, at least for me, when I'm suddenly confronted by a scripture verse or a sentence in a devotional that I know I must have read many times before but I feel like I'm seeing it for the first time. As absurd as I know it must be, when this occurs, I internally blurt out, “Where did that come from? Was that there before? I'm pretty sure it wasn't!” Of course, it was there before, but before that moment I probably wasn't ready to see/read/hear/understand it and, now for some reason, I am. The time is right.

My last “Where did that come from?” moment occurred recently when I came across Luke 21:14-15 in my time in scripture:

Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

Jesus is talking to his disciples about the time coming when the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed and persecution and imprisonment will follow. As sometimes happens in Jesus' teachings, he talks about two events at once. Here, he talks simultaneously about the temple, which would be destroyed in 70 A.D., and his second coming at the end of time. Both events would be difficult for his followers and would require huge amounts of trust in God to get through those times. Though the word “trust” is not in the above scripture, for some reason it shouted “Trust!” to me as I read this verse, seemingly for the first time.

Like many off-the-scale introverts, I'm very much an internal processor. Meditating beforehand is how I operate. Most of my conversations have been rehearsed multiple times before I open my mouth. In corporate settings, it has been suggested that supervisors supply questions for meetings ahead of time to all employees that are to attend the meeting. This allows those introverts, often deep thinkers with excellent ideas, to prepare what they might want to share at the meeting. If the questions are sprung cold on these introverts at the meeting, they are more likely to remain silent because they haven't had enough time to “meditate beforehand.”

But back to Luke...Of course I had read the verses before, but in my old NIV Bible where it says,

But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves...

The NIV allowed me to read these words as an emotional issue, worrying being something I have little control over. Easy, peasy, I could say. Just give it over to Jesus. Somehow, when I read the words in my ESV Bible, they had a much greater impact on me. Meditating, defined as to think deeply or carefully about something, to plan mentally or consider, seemed like something I was more responsible for. I was struck with some dismay at the wording of the verses, as though it was speaking directly to me. If it was, then I was being told to settle it in my mind not – NOT! – to do what I've always done, to rehearse, to plan mentally, to make sure I had all my words right before I opened my mouth. “Wait!” I wanted to shout, “Isn't thinking about what I want to say before I open my mouth a good thing?” Generally, yes, but in thinking on this scripture, I realized how much I was trusting myself and my intellect and deep thinking and my wording of things. I didn't leave any room for what God might want me to say in any given situation. Being somewhat new to this true trust thing*, was I willing to learn another way of speaking? The scripture in Luke says that Jesus himself with give me “a mouth and a wisdom”, which none of my adversaries would be able to withstand or contradict. A mouth! Like “She's got some mouth on her.” That sounded sassy and more than a little scary to me.

In contemplating these words, I became acutely aware how much of my communicative energy is tied up in wanting to say the right thing according to my definition of what that right thing might be. God was reminding me that He could be leaned upon, trusted totally to allow me to say what I am supposed to say, what He would want me to say, in any given situation. I might not be facing the adversaries of end times persecution in my verbal interactions, but for introverts like me, most conversations have an adversarial vibe to them. Social situations with friends, difficult conversations with family members, uncomfortable conflicts with neighbors, random incidents with complete strangers – they all require a communicative energy that if I have to muster up myself, I will always fall short. Did I believe that God could give me a mouth and wisdom for all these situations? Was I willing to ask for His words, given in His timing, in all my conversations instead of automatically defaulting to my internal processing? Could I trust Him with this part of my being? After all, He knows how He made this introvert. I guess I can trust Him to give me a mouth...

*See Week 1 for my “Oh, Sweetie, you've never trusted me...” epiphany.