When you are in a foreign environment, you can ask a lot of questions.
In the strange, there can be issues of what is worth holding onto and what’s worth releasing. This series began with reflections of my own time when I left home for the strange world of university. It can be easy to overcome by all the new, different and odd practices. It can be easy to adapt and adopt practices and beliefs even to the point that what was valuable previously is diminished or disregarded.
The book of Daniel is a fascinating read indeed.
It’s not always easy and straightforward, but it remains a worthwhile read for any follower of Jesus. This collection of writings concerning episodes of the life of Daniel and his friends starts at the intensely personal struggle a group of young men have fitting into a new culture without forsaking their fundamental values of faith. It then goes to cosmic scales of eternal value outlining the future of the world and of God’s people. Its scope goes from that of the prayer practices of a government official to the way God will bring everything to culmination in the establishment of His eternal Kingdom after a series of troublesome times. It is personal and prayerful, it is corporate and considered and is cosmically calamitous and glorious.
This is not the sort of book that you can read in one sitting and put down having totally understood everything said in it. That’s largely because not even the writer understood everything that was said in it at the time and the minds of many have not totally understood it. Yet it remains undoubtedly a vital part of what God was revealing to the world about who He is even as His people were sent into exile for disobedience. Where other gods would have been seen as a defeated one of no use, the God of Daniel enforced His Almighty credentials so that even the rulers of the greatest empires of the day had to acknowledge that there was no God greater than the one served by this man from the captured people.
Taking your time to consider each episode in this book and then the writing as a whole is to take in just how awesome God is and how the rightful response to that should be humble adoration and total devotion even if it calls for conflict against the status quo.
Those who follow Jesus are called to embrace a life where they are strangers in a strange land. Their home is not where they currently reside. Their home is not the rule of the powers of the day. Though they may work in that setting, though they are called to honour those who rule in that setting, they recognise that their heritage and their destiny resembles the one who would declare that His Kingdom was not of this earth.
Those who follow Jesus are called to take a stand for righteousness not out of arrogant defiance, but flowing from a life already committed to doing that which is pleasing to the great King of the universe. Those who follow Jesus are called to see the dedicated life in Him allow them to excel in whatever area of life they’re assigned to by the Lord. Those who follow Jesus are called to a life filled with challenge, resistance, hostility and obstruction. They are called to acknowledge that there are more twists and turns for this world to take as beastly empires look to engulf and swallow peoples will all kinds of destructive elements and strategies that dehumanise and divide as much as they look to conquer and rule. Yet those who follow Jesus are not defined by these tendencies. Like Daniel, they look to God for insight on the present and the time to come in order to pray right and live right in the sight of God.
There is much to rejoice about in the book of Daniel, there is much reason for hope knowing the God who reveals aspects of His will and His character in this book. The challenge for the follower of Jesus is whether they will take the time to read what is written in this book and in the light of Jesus carefully meditate, absorb and apply the word.
I approached this series of reflections with some degree of trepidation. Daniel is a book that can be taken for granted in the first six chapters and appear too weird and complex to consider in the last six chapters. I am grateful for the resources that have been present during the reflections. What they do more than anything is not make things easier, they often make the task of understanding what I am reading all the more important to be able to applaud the God who spoke of things to come with such accuracy that it offers reason to exercise faith in Him.
A great way a resource helps when it comes to scripture is to genuinely go back and carefully read the scripture on its own merits. Read it. See it. Pick up what can be understood and make a note of what’s confusing. Then prayerfully consider these issues before reading it again and trusting God to help you in understanding or patiently knowing that what needs to be known will be known in time. That process did not lead me to think I’m an expert on the book of Daniel. I appreciated why people reached different conclusions on their understanding of different parts of the prophetic parts of the book. In those differences, I did not see anything that gave reason for doubt about the God who inspired Daniel to write.
The essential thing to take from the reflection was to see what these writing said about the nature and greatness of God and how we as humans can be in the light of that either in meek submission to Him, or in stubborn rebellion.
At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,
for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
Daniel 4:34-35 (ESV)
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”
There is something truly glorious about the conclusion Nebuchadnezzar reached about God. It’s a conclusion that I hope we all leave with about God in the light of how He reveals Himself and why it’s worth seeing Him revealed in His Son Jesus, the King who rules.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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