Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open towards Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day to pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, December 1, 2024
by Vicar Wing Yin Li, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Prayer can be an act of resistance, and such resistance is built upon our faith and hope in God’s salvation.
Often, we applaud Daniel’s faith and hope in God at the end of this story when Daniel was found alive in the lion’s den and when he proclaimed to King Darius his trust in God’s deliverance. While it is indeed a moment that shows how Daniel’s faith and hope in God have been proven strong and sound, it is not the first or the only moment we witness Daniel’s faith. In fact, Daniel’s faith is manifested in his defiance of the King’s ordinance, the very act that soon put him into the lion’s den. When the governors in the palace urged the King to establish an interdict that prohibited anyone from praying to any god or human, they were having Daniel in mind as the person they wished to entrap with this new interdict. The intent of the interdict is clear: they wanted to set up something that they could complain against Daniel in relation to the law of his God (v.5). However, there is not a law in the Hebrew Bible that directly commands believers to pray daily to God. So, actually, Daniel was not placed within a strict dilemma where he had to break the law of God or the law of King Darius.
Yet, due to his obedience to God’s command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5), Daniel decided to break the law of King Darius. And he did not break it secretly, but he chose to pray to God in a way that was visible to others – praying in the upper room with windows open facing toward Jerusalem (vv.10-11). While the text says that it was his usual way of praying, it was not any less of an act of resistance. Considering that the act of praying is not limited to any specific space, Daniel’s insistence to pray in a way that could threaten his life in his context was an intentional gesture of resistance. He was determined to resist against anything that attempted to restrict or confine his way of loving his God. And this bold act of resistance was not possible if it was not built upon his strong faith and hope in God’s deliverance.
