Lessons from Daniel
Last evening as my household and I grieved the same kind of election results in Brazil as the US saw in 2020, I couldn’t help but think about the prophet Daniel.
We’ve recently been going through Daniel’s prophecies during a zoom Sunday service my husband holds with his family in Brazil. What stands out about Daniel’s situation is how relevant it is to ours today. He witnessed the overthrow of many governments in his long life. As a youth he saw the conquest of his homeland and was forced into the service of the conquering king. God’s favor elevated Daniel to a high position in the Babylonian government. He saw Nebuchadnezzar, who was impressed with Daniel, diminished to a sick little animal but later restored. He saw the defeat and destruction of his overlords, the Babylonians, when the Medo-Persians took power. He faced change after change after change, but his heart never wavered from God’s ways. God was on Daniel’s side because Daniel was on God’s side
In his old age, Daniel was given a vision of the defeat of the Medo-Persian empire, which hadn’t even come to power yet. God showed him what would happen to the children of Israel after that empire fell to the Greeks. After seeing the horrible things his people would endure, Daniel was sick on his bed for days. But once he recovered physically, he went about the king’s business. A king whose days, Daniel had been warned, were numbered. After the initial shock, he didn’t let it keep him down.
A few months to a year after his vision in chapter 8, we find Daniel reading the Word of God, pondering the prophecies in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 25, written before the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar, tells of the Holy City’s imminent demise as well as giving a word of hope. It would be seventy long years, enough time for the corrupt generation of Jewish leaders to die out, but it wouldn’t be forever. At the end of seventy years, God would punish Babylon and allow the Jews to return to their land.
Jeremiah 29, written some eight years after the first wave of captives were taken to Babylon, has more words of comfort for the Jewish diaspora. I’m paraphrasing here, but Jeremiah urges them to settle, grow crops, marry and have families, and to work for the overall good of their new land. In other words, bloom where the Lord planted them.
Daniel was pondering Jeremiah’s words because by this time, the fall of Babylon had taken place, yet the Jews hadn’t returned to the land. I don’t know if Daniel, himself, hoped to go home. He was over 80 years old by this time, and travel back in the day wasn’t as quick or easy as it is today. But his burden for his people drove him to pray, fasting, in sackcloth and ashes. A long, beautiful prayer of confession for the sins of his people. He recognized that all the evil that had happened to Judah was because the people, their leaders, their priests turned away from the paths of God. He poured out his heart to the Lord, admitting they didn’t deserve anything good because of the shame they brought on themselves. But he implored God to have mercy on them.
Before he finished his prayer, the angel Gabriel appeared to him with answers.
Daniel certainly knew how to bloom where he was planted. He served the kings of Babylon with excellence, and when the Persians took over, he served them with honor and dignity as well. All while maintaining his testimony and his relationship with God intact. It cost him a night in the lion’s den, but God saw that he was justified and taken care of.
What does all this have to do with the questionable election results in Brazil? To quote another Hebrew captive who rose to prominence in a foreign land, what man intended for evil, God intended for good.
The Bible tells us the nations rage, but God laughs at them. Man can trample the truth, lie, steal and cheat, but in the end, God wins. Which means we, His followers, win by default. The treacherous Persian officials who tried to get Daniel killed ended up meeting the fate they had planned for him. God worked it out that way. Daniel didn’t have to do anything but trust and obey. He went on to serve in the land of his captivity until his death. He never let the injustices of his life’s circumstances keep him from trusting God or from serving the governments that conquered and oppressed his people.
Daniel, his three friends, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael (better known as Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego) and Joseph are great role models. They were human beings, quite young at the time of the big changes that led them to live captive lives in foreign lands. But they rose above and bloomed where they’d been planted by God, and brought great blessing to those around them. We can too. In the face of injustice. In the face of corruption. In the face of persecution and death.
I allowed myself the space to grieve last night for what this means for Brazil and all those I love who live there. I fell on my knees in tears this morning, asking God why. His still, small voice whispered to me, “Wait and see.” What and how long? I have no idea. But I got up, showered, had breakfast, and I will go about my business as Daniel did in his day. I can do it because I rest in the knowledge that God is in control. I am on the winning side, even if I might not live long enough to see the end of the game.
