Lions.

Daniel 6.16-28

After the sun had been swallowed by the western horizon, there was a chill in the pit.  Daniel shivered, and not just b/c of the cold.

Sure, he believed.  He trusted that God would keep him from harm.

The lions paced, back and forth.  The dull thud of the pads of their paws on the damp clay of the pit.  Just b/c their mouths had been miraculously closed, Daniel eyed those paws.  Lions typically didnt kill with their mouths.

Even in the dark, he could hear them moving, beginning to settle, all around him.  Was he the lamb, they the lions, of which Isaiah spoke?

He slept like a baby, lulled into dreams by the gentle snoring of the king of beasts, watched over by angels of the King of Kings.  And he woke with the dawn, well-rested and ready to greet King Darius with a smile, ready to show him how great his God was.  So great, that the king would share the news with the known world, of how God saved Daniel from those lions currently feasting on those who had caused him to be thrown in the same pit.

He had been right about those paws.

To the best of our abilities.

Daniel 6.1-15

People get jealous of happy, hardworking people.  Especially on the job.  Hey, chill out with that working so hard—you’re making us look bad!

I experienced this working in group homes.  There are a variety of people who do this line of work.  Some have degrees in social work.  Others just need a job, and special-need support is always hiring.  Still others do it b/c they have a passion for it.

I guess my time spent supporting youth with special-needs were a combination of the latter two.  When I needed a job, I knew I could always work at Starbucks or a group home.  But it was the last—the passion—that most motivated my work.  Whenever I took a shift, I was on—the whole time—doing everything in my ability to help with tutoring, housekeeping, toilet training, socialization.  Unless they really needed some time alone, I was always engaged with the youth I was supporting.

And I’m not tooting my horn, I was just doing what I thought we were supposed to do.  But not everyone felt this way.  For some of the others, it was a job and only a job.  Yes, they met the needs of the youth, passed meds, made sure they were safe and cared for, but they also spent time on the phone with boyfriends, time with the other staff, watching the clock or the television, waiting to be picked up.  It wasnt that my work effort was despised, but I was told that it made everyone else look bad.

This wasnt my intent, of course.  I just felt that I was doing the right thing while serving the needs of the youth as best I could.

Did I change?  No.  Did I criticize them for doing it any different?  No.  I understood.

I’m no Daniel, but that’s the way I see his situation.  He made others look bad b/c he did what was right—he did his job to the fullest.  Regardless.

If we draw criticism for doing our jobs the best we can, we shouldnt change.  We shouldnt change just b/c we make someone else look bad.  Nor should we judge or condemn another just b/c their work ethic is different than ours.

Whatever we do in life, we ought to do well.  Just b/c others cut corners, doesnt mean we should.  Just b/c others dont pour themselves fully into whatever they’re doing, doesnt mean we shouldnt put all of ourselves in.  And just b/c they arent as passionate as us, doesnt mean we should judge, even if we are for our actions.

But maybe we can inspire.  Inspire others with our passion—our passion for doing a job well done, as God would have us do all things—to the best of our abilities.

The hand of God.

Daniel 5.13-30

Numbers.  Weights.  Divisions.  That’s what was written on the wall for Belshazzar.  Numbers.  Weights.  Divisions.

Daniel didnt hesitate to say it as he saw, regardless of what might’ve happened.  Sure, the king said he’d be promoted, but who knows.  Daniel wasnt in it for the money or the reputation—he had a gift and he used it.  He had a word and he spoke it.

Numbers.  Weights.  Divisions.  The numbers meant Belshazzar’s days were numbered.  The weights, that when his time for judgement came he would be too light.  Division—that what would happen to his kingdom.

And though for Belshazzar these three words were a death sentence, we can turn them into a challenge for our own lives.

Numbered—how would you be living differently knowing that your days were numbered?  Read a story the other day—I think it was in the book, “Jesus: Life Coach.”  Wife, with cancer, husband by her side—stunned at how courageous she was.  “How do you do it?” he asked.  “How do you live each day knowing that you are dying?”

“How do you live each day trying to pretend you’re not?”

A sense of urgency.  Purpose.  Trying to make the most of each day we’ve been given … numbers.

And weights.  Belshazzar was too light b/c he was too full of himself.  And people who are full of themselves like this are empty, regardless of what they might believe, empty.  Less of self, more of God … weights.

Finally, divisions.  Parker Palmer wrote a great book about living the “undivided life,” of merging ones desires, actions, plans with those of God.  Moving from simply playing a role in ones life to living ones soul—ones created purpose.  It’s not so much balance as wholeness.  The mobius strip.  Waters from two streams merging into one, clear stream … undivided.

Numbers.  Weights.  Divisions.

Live like your dying.

Fill yourself up with God.

Undivide your life.

The hand of God upon the wall.

The best laid traps.

Daniel 5.1-12

The apple doesnt fall far from the tree they say.  Belshazzar, just like his father—in his early days.

Idolatrous.  Tyrannical.  Heedless of God.  Drinking from gold and silver bowls that were not his own—trophies from his father’s campaign against Israel.  Worshiping gods made of the same.  Probably thinking one day he’ll take down Nebudchadnezzar’s statue and replace it with his own.  It must’ve been quite a party.

Especially when the hand started writing on the wall.

Dear old mom.  Father gone, she bore witness of how Daniel helped HIM.  The same remedy.

Like father, like son.  Tormented by dreams and visions.  Maddened by selfishness, drunk on power.

I knew a family.  Broken family.  Parents each with problems of their own, and two children growing up.  One, rebelled against their parents—swore they’d never be like them.  Yet still you could see the love.  But they saw.  The child saw that the traps the parents had made for themselves in their lives didnt have to be ones own.

The other child, though, fell into those same traps.

Certainly it wouldnt be that Beshazzar wouldnt end up mad in the wilderness, long hair and talon nails, like his father.  When Daniel interprets the dream, he’ll get it—right?

Who’s awesome?

Daniel 4.28-37

King Neb.  The episode of the fiery furnace wasnt enough.  Nor Daniel’s interpretation of his second dream.  King Neb wasnt far removed from the man who had built a statue to himself.  Seems nothing could make him wholly devoted to the Lord God and less to himself.

Walking around, looking at Babylon, patting himself on the back.  “Look at how awesome I am!”  And immediately, a voice from heaven, saying “I’ll show you who’s awesome.”

Driven into the wilderness, mad.  Resembling the strange man in the alley behind the diner in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Dirty, wild hair, nails like talons.

This is where our own selfishness can lead.  We will drive ourselves mad, always trying to do what we want.  Drive ourselves mad striving for the acclamations.  The price of egotism is madness.

But God brought King Neb back, restoring his sanity.  After seven long years, King Neb was back.  But not as he was.  He had learned that there is only one awesome thing—one awesome being in the universe—the universe of which God is the center, not us.

It’s okay to be proud of ourselves.  It’s okay to pat ourselves on the back.  It’s okay to celebrate our accomplishments and successes.  Like finally getting a teaching license.  Finally getting ordained.

When people say they’ve enjoyed a sermon—or one of my children’s songs—it feels good.  It feels good to have a nice article written about you in the paper.  Good when people say it’s the best wedding they’ve ever been to, or how much they miss you.  But that feeling … that goodness.  That’s God.

When we get it right, when we feel that good, there is only one explanation—only one source for the goodness we feel.  God.  Because it is God who has done great things, and if through us—what a feeling!

Dont drive yourself mad thinking how awesome you are.  Feel good about the kinds of goodness God can do in and through your life.  It’s pretty awesome when God does.

Four instead of three, two instead of one.

Daniel 3.19-30
Three men were thrown into the fire, but four endured it.

King Neb was furious at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego for not bowing down to the monument in his likeness that he had made for himself. He ordered the furnace turned up from char to combust—soldiers, it seems, literally burst into flames when they threw the three men in. And just to make it worse, they were thrown in fully dressed as if for a winter’s hike on the Yellowood Trail.

When the king looked into the furnace, he didnt expect to see men walking around—much less FOUR men. And he certainly didnt expect them not even to break a sweat.

Isaiah said that when we pass through the water, God would be there; when we pass through the fire, God would be there. And we certainly see that in the story of the three men—God w/ them in the fire. Note especially the word “when.” Not “if.”

There will be furnaces in our lives. No, not the fiery furnace of hell which childhood preachers told me to fear w/ a fear that kept me up at night. Furnaces meaning trials—tests of faith. The true test for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was not the heat of the furnace but the depth of their faith. Saying “No” to the king, regardless the punishments, in order to say “Yes” to God. The furnace? God took care of that.

God walks ever beside, behind, and beyond us. Always there. When the heat gets turned up in our lives—professional, personal, social, spiritual—when the heart races and thoughts spin, while we just try and hold on—GOD IS THERE. When we walk, wherever we walk, there is never just one but always two. Not Marley, but Majesty and me, just as there were four men in the furnace when there should’ve been three.

A monumental wonder.

Daniel 3.1-18

Monuments.  They are all around us.  Monuments to heroes.  Monuments to progress.  Monuments of finanical institutions.  Monuments of fame.

Yankee Stadium.  The house that Ruth built.  Now fallen.  The balls are leaping off bats in the new one and no one watches.  No one can afford to.  Ticket prices too high.  Make the maximum withdrawal in order to eat hot dogs.

Continuing on in Daniel, we draw nearer and nearer to the fiery furnace we remember from childhood stories.  A monument of the king built BY the king for the people to worship.  Most of them.  But not Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They were faithful Jews who learned from stories of golden calves and followed the Torah—no graven images.  And they were willing to face the furnace, certain that God would be with them, as long as they didnt bow before any monument to one whose power was only fleeting, regardless of what he thought.

Monuments.  There are monuments to God all around us, but they arent of human hands.  The hills brushed with the green of spring.  The fields dashed with hints of purple.  A bird sitting on her nest, watching over new life.  Clouds filling the sky.  The moon surrounded by winking stars.  All of creation is a monument to the Power of life, filling all the world.

We pass by.  We look to what men have made, and what they have destroyed.  Rockets to the moon pale in comparison to the lunar orb that circles us nightly, reminding us that life has its rhythms, time its cycle, and that things must live and things must die.

“We will not bow to your gods, nor worship your monuments.”  We worship what cannot be recreated yet is recreating life all around us as Spring opens up the wonder of a life that goes on.  We need not fear the fiery furnace as long as we live worshipfully, bowing our will to the God, the monumental wonder of the world.

Remember yr friends.

Daniel 2.31-49

Daniel remembered his friends.

When last I blogged from Daniel, through which we are currently reading through when following the Daily Office, King Neb had put unrealistic expectations on his advisors; however, Daniel knew that what impossibilities may face a person, God can do the impossible.  So strengthened by God and filled with God’s wisdom, Daniel puts himself in a dangerous position for the sake of others when he goes to tell the King both the content and the meaning of his dream.

He does this not just to save his own neck but those of others—including the Babylonian advisors, who couldnt save themselves.  Before the King, Daniel is bold and confident b/c he knows that what he shares with him is the truth, b/c it comes from God.  And it’s a hard truth.  The truth of a divided kindgom.  A truth the King may have a hard time hearing.  But, b/c it was the truth—even a hard truth—King Neb rewarded Daniel, promoting him to a high position, lavishing him w/ gifts.

But even then, Daniel didnt stop thinking of others.  “What about Shadrach, Meshach, abednego?  King Neb … think you could take care of them too?”

Most people, having climbed their way up from the bottom, forget those around them.  In the world of self-made men and women, so many are focused so much on personal gain and accomplishments that they forget those around them when they make it to the top.

A similar story to Daniel’s is that told in one of my favorite movies, “The Fisher King.”  Once Jack (played by Jeff Bridges) gets back on top after falling so far down, he doesnt forget his good friend, Perry—the homeless man he befriended when he was down (an Oscar-worthy performance by Robin Williams) and goes on a “quest” for him—once again risking his very reputation if he failed.

Daniel risked his life for others when he went before the King, and then further when he asked a favor for his friends.  A very Christ-like act, for what better example of one who put their life at risk for others than Jesus Christ?  Rather than just keeping all the heavenly reward for himself, Jesus Christ put his life on the line—on the cross—so that we too might share in that reward, just like Daniel’s friends.

Therefore, we are challenged to do the same for others.  Not to forget them when we reach the top—when we are back on our feet.  Gratitude.  Vulnerability.  Putting our lives and reputations on the line so that we are not the only ones who stand to gain.

Whatever we do in life—whatever accomplishment or success—there is always someone to thank.  So when you reach the top, remember to thank God and everyone else you can think of.

Unrealistic expectations.

Daniel 2.1-16

Unrealistic expectations.  Nebuchadnezzar had unrealistic expectations for his advisors.  He had a dream, and rather than just ask them to do the Jungian thing and interpret it for them, King Neb asked them to play conjurer as well.  “Tell me WHAT my dream was, then tell me what it MEANS.”

The advisors had every right to protest, AND Nebuchadnezzar had no right to threaten them with execution.  It’s a lot like the situation we saw played out yesterday in the latest episode of our Horatio Hornblower marathon.  (We’ve been borrowing the A&E series from the library and just finished episode six, “The Mutiny.”)  Captain Sawyer was going mad, paranoid, doped up on laudnum.  He placed unrealistic expectations on his officers—including making Hornblower keep two watches for thirty-six hours straight w/o falling asleep.  It was no surprise that later Horatio was nodding off, but for Sawyer to threaten him w/ execution …

How the officers felt on that ship must’ve been how the advisors felt about Nebuchadnezzar.  And though we dont finish the story today, we do have the hint of how they might be spared and of what’s going on.  It’s not a test of men; it’s a test of God, as even one of the advisors admits: “What Your Majesty is asking for is so difficult that no one can do it, except for the gods, and they do not live among human beings”(v.11, GNT).

Indeed this is the point.  And it’s a similar point Jesus himself would later make.  When the rich young man comes, asking what he must do to follow.  “Give up all you have and follow me.”  Impossible.  “Maybe,” Jesus said.  “But what is impossible for human beings IS possible for God.”

Unrealistic expectations.  That’s the kind only God can meet.  And though bosses, teachers, leaders may place them on others, setting them up to fail, when it comes to what God can do, we should have no expectations—only wonder.

No thanks, I’m good.

Daniel 1.1-21

Nebuchadnezzar.  (Ya gotta have a feeling that the spell checker is going to look at that one and say, “What?”)  KING Nebuchadnezzar—looking for help.  But not everyone qualifies.  Only handsome, intelligent, well-mannered young men.  Still for Daniel and his friends, it was the chance of a lifetime.

But there were some things that Daniel wouldnt compromise, just to impress his boss.  In particular, what to eat.

We as Christians, most Christians—we dont have dietary laws, so we dont understand.  Not eating kosher, for some, is equivalent to sin.  For Daniel, he would’ve knowledgably taken something into his body which would make him unholy.  And the Babylonians knew it.  Forcing the young men to eat a Babylonian diet—it was one expression of conquest, of reminding who was the ruler, and who the slave.

So most went along with it—better to be unholy and alive.  Not for Daniel.  But instead of simply defying the orders, he turns it into a challenge.  “I bet you that my diet can beat up your diet.”

Cave in or stick to your convictions.  That’s a position into which many situations place us … with the decision of just going along with what the group is doing, with orders regardless how immoral, OR sticking to your convictions.  Pressured, ordered to do something against your will, saying instead “No thanks, I’m good.”