THE TESTIMONY OF ANOTHER KING
|
When my mother moved to a different home a couple of years ago, she found a small “book” that I had written sometime before the age of ten that somewhat creatively retold the story of Daniel and the lions, complete with crude but cute illustrations.
As someone who grew up with these Bible stories, my imagination had obviously been captured by this particular incident. Rediscovering this early attempt at authorship caused me to reflect on how my life and faith were shaped by this story, by Daniel’s example of courageous faithfulness and God’s miraculous protection. Notably, that experience had a similar effect on King Darius as one of the first witnesses to it. More directly than my engagement with this story, he was there “when Daniel was lifted from the den, [and] no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God” (Daniel 6:23). The king wrote his testimony as a decree to all the peoples of his kingdom, urging that they show “fear and reverence” to this God who had so dramatically saved Daniel and whom Daniel so courageously served.
As exuberant as Darius was in his newfound respect for Daniel’s God, his understanding of faith was different from Daniel’s faith. While Darius celebrated God’s “signs and wonders,” Daniel’s everyday faithfulness was already in place long before God rescued or saved. It is good to respond to the evidence of God’s goodness and power, but Daniel was committed to God even in His seeming absence. Daniel’s attitude of faith and trust in God’s faithfulness was later recommended to those who were suffering for their faith in the early church: “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good” (1 Peter 4:19).
