Thirty Days

“The king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.” – Daniel 6:7

For some reason, I’ve never noticed before that the prayer ban was only for thirty days. It was temporary! This puts Daniel’s actions in a whole new light. Have you ever gone thirty days without praying? I’m sure I have at many points in my life. 

In fact, think of all the things Daniel could have done to avoid death. He could have closed his windows so no one could know he was still praying. He could have decreased the frequency of his prayers. He could have prayed silently to himself and not out loud. And of course, he could have just taken a thirty-day break, before going back to praying like he had before. But Daniel was so committed to his spiritual routine that he was willing to die for it. 

There were other complex things at play here too of course—but the point is, what does it take to upset my spiritual routine? A lot less than a death threat. Fatigue, travel, torpor, an alluring or entertaining distraction. How much do I value talking to God on a daily basis? To Daniel, doing that was worth his life. And so he acted just “as he had done previously.” That phrase is significant. His spiritual routine eased the way for him to continue living out his faith even during a time of crisis and attack. And at the same time, the crisis and attack revealed just how much that routine and that prayer meant to him.

Do you have a spiritual routine? Would someone be able to say about you, “I know what time of day I can catch her praying”? If you feel caught up in a moment of crisis or unprecedented circumstances, are you continuing those routines? More than ever, we need right now to be spending time with God in prayer.

A Study In Anger

“Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated… Because the king’s order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men… fell bound into the burning fiery furnace.” – Daniel 3:19-23

In this passage, king Nebuchadnezzar is “filled with fury,” which ironically in Aramaic means “full of heat.” This is no steady or even momentary opposition to unrighteousness, but a sudden outburst sparked by offended pride. We learn four things here about angry outbursts. 

First, they distort our perception. Nebuchadnezzar had reason to trust these three men; just one chapter ago, he had appointed them over affairs in the province. But here “the expression of his face was changed” against them. Angry outbursts always distort our perception of others and the situation in ways we may not realize until later.

Secondly, angry outbursts are irrational. There was no logical reason for ordering that the furnace be heated seven times hotter—if anything, the victims would have died more quickly and been tortured less. The ways we vent our anger during outbursts usually don’t solve the problem or even make much sense. 

Thirdly, angry outbursts are always urgent. The entire thing was rash to start with (“if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace,” verse 15), but his outburst causes him to act with even greater urgency. There was nothing about the situation that was a true emergency, but that’s how these outbursts work: they flare up in the moment. They make waiting seem impossible.

Lastly, angry outbursts cause collateral damage. Nebuchadnezzar ends up killing the innocent men who carried out his orders. Angry outbursts always hurt more than just the people we target; they affect bystanders in ways we may not intend or be aware of.

Anger itself is not a sin, but Nebuchadnezzar’s story is a warning that angry outbursts almost always lead to sinful behavior, because they distort our perception of reality, lead us into irrational behavior rather than true problem-solving, and cause us to act too urgently in a way that ends up hurting everyone present. May we learn from his example and be wary of these outbursts in our lives.

Names

“And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.” – Daniel 1:7

“Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts.” – Isaiah 46:1

In a way, the story of what captivity meant to Daniel and his friends are all in this one verse. Daniel means “God my judge”: a reminder both of the God who sees everything he does, and of Daniel’s vocation as a prophet who would proclaim God’s judgment to his people. Belteshazzar means “Bel’s prince.” Bel was the principal divinity worshipped in Babylon; to be considered his prince was a flattering distinction for the youthful Daniel. Your God is out of the picture now, he is being told. You have been selected as the cream of the crop, the prince of Bel himself; that is who you are.

There is an erasing of Yahweh in the other name changes. Hananiah, which means “favored by Jehovah,” is changed to Shadrach, which means “inspired by the Sun-god.” Mishael, which means “who is what God is?” is changed to Meshach, which means “who is what the goddess Shak is?” Azariah, which means “whom Jehovah helps,” is changed to Abednego, “servant of Nebo.” Nebo likely referred to the planet Mercury, worshipped by the Babylonians and in the name of king Nebuchadnezzar himself. 

Both sets of names assume that our identity is inseparable from who we worship. That we all serve something. That we all need the kind of favor, help and wonder that can only come from something outside of ourselves. But the longing and the purpose have been rewritten: not as coming from and looking to Yahweh, but as it relates to the alluring Babylonian pantheon of the cultural majority. Is this so different from what we do, from the messages we hear? We have our own gods of career, children, appearance, achievement, and so on. 

But as Isaiah says, these gods become burdens. They bear us down, like weary beasts. What promises freedom only brings us into captivity. “Listen to me,” God says. “I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4). Daniel and his friends will not forget this, and neither should we.

Selfies And Psalms

“Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens!” – Psalm 150:1

The selfie camera on my old phone was broken for the better part of a year, which I considered theologically profound, so I didn’t bother to fix it. Eventually I upgraded my phone, though, and rediscovered how positively odd and revolutionary it is to not only be completely aware of how I look to others, but be able to manipulate that image. No wonder people get so obsessed over their best selfie angle. No wonder an entire generation has been ushered into the “selfie age,” where we broadcast ourselves, desire personal fame, and have what David Brooks has termed “an unusual level of self-interest” and an “enlarged sense of self.” 

The Bible tells a completely different story. As Sally Lloyd-Jones writes in The Jesus Storybook Bible, “The Bible isn’t mainly about me and what I should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done.” And Psalm 150, this last of the psalms, speaks to that story. Take just one word: “heavens.” This is Greek raqiya, which means “to be clear, to be brilliant, to shine,” and it stretches both back to the beginning and forward into all eternity. In Genesis 1, this is the word for the expanse that God made: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters… And God made the expanse… and God called the expanse Heaven.” In Ezekiel 1, this is the word for the expanse that is God’s eternal dwelling and the seat of his throne: “Over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of an expanse, shining like awe-inspiring crystal, spread out above their heads… And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire.” In Daniel 12, this is the word for the brilliance of the wise: “And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above.”

This is a story that begins and ends with a God who creates and dwells in expanses that are the very embodiment and shining forth of his glory and power. And the first thing we must do is take our eyes off our screens and ourselves, and look up, at that expanse which calls to us. Because, amazingly, we are in the story. Psalm 150 is really describing our own future, we who will one day shine like the expanse above. As Tim Keller writes, “If we could praise God perfectly, we would love him completely and then our joy would be full. The new heavens and the new earth are perfect because everyone and everything is glorifying God fully and therefore enjoying him forever. Psalm 150 gives us a glimpse of that unimaginable future. So praise him everywhere (verse 1) for everything (verse 2) in every way (verses 3–5). ‘Let everything that has breath praise the Lord’ (verse 6).”