Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, September 1, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: It’s okay if we don’t understand all of the things we hear in a life of faith—the important thing is that we keep on listening.
As we enter into this passage today, we see Daniel in the middle of a conversation with a celestial comforter. This comforter is relaying a string of visions to Daniel about Daniel’s people and about the guardian, Michael, who is actively working on their behalf. Two other beings appear suddenly to speak to the urgency of these visions—to tell Daniel when he can expect the end of the world to take place. But their words didn’t make sense to Daniel. “I heard,” he says, “but could not understand.”
Rather than digging in deeper to something he isn’t getting, Daniel changes the subject. Instead, he asks, “What shall be the outcome of these things?” In other words, “What does all of this mean for the here and the now? And maybe even the soon-to-be?” Daniel pivots to the significance of the visions. We might even say the theology of them. And it isn’t because the question of timing is unimportant. It’s because the question of timing isn’t the most important.
Even if none of them is clear to us, resurrection, judgment, purification, violence, rescue, wisdom and the shot at everlasting life mean something for us. They tell us that we live in a world destined to be different than it is today. They tell us that our suffering matters. That it moves things and changes things. They tell us that the universe bends toward justice, and that we have advocates everywhere who won’t stop disrupting the status quo until every inch of the cosmos has been transformed, and we can fall into it, restful and peaceful and loved.
In Jesus, we know what Daniel was meant to know in the figure of Michael. A prince. A deliverer. A friend destined for us. If we keep listening for Jesus—and for his visions—we will keep asking questions. We might not understand every answer that meets us, but we will become wiser in the asking. We will shift our focus and our orientation. We will experiment with how to apply the things we dounderstand to the people, places and things around us. Even to ourselves. Hearing can be its own kind of understanding. And it’s the kind of understanding we are being called to today.
