Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“When the king heard the charge, he was very much distressed. He was determined to save Daniel, and until the sun went down he made every effort to rescue him.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, August 18, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God comes alive in ambiguity, meeting us and affirming us when we’re feeling uncertain.
We tend to treat this story in a similar way to the story we read last week—Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and the fiery furnace. We focus on God’s deliverance of the faithful by marveling at the fact that Daniel spent an entire night in a pit full of lions. There’s a lot to that.
But if we focus, instead, on King Darius, we’ll find an intriguing and refreshing balance to the certainty and conviction God used to work in the life of Nebuchadnezzar.
King Darius is painted as a wishy-washy figure. He is never truly set on the interdict recognizing his authority. (For one thing, it isn’t his idea. A group of presidents and satraps brings it to him and convinces him that he should pilot it. And on top of that, once Darius finds out that David is going to suffer because of this interdict, he does everything he can to walk it back.) He is never truly in charge of his own kingdom, either, much less his own court. Daniel’s punishment goes through despite Darius’s protestation, and in every stage of it, Darius is worried. Obsessive. Checking in.
In Daniel’s deliverance, Darius realizes that God was with him in all his skepticism. God was with him in all of his attempts to turn things around, even if they didn’t go anywhere right away. God was with him during his anxiety-ridden, sleepless nights and God heard his prayer for Daniel: “May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you!”
Sometimes, God speaks to us in doubt. As doubt. Sometimes, God is more powerful in passivity than in confidence. Sometimes, just holding worry with us is what God needs to do to help us most. God’s deliverance was just as much for Darius as it was for Daniel…and God’s deliverance is for us, too.
