Are you against the grain?

     As The Story continues, we find the Israelites living in exile, dispersed throughout the region of Babylon.  Of course as it is with any military victory, the young, talented, and valuable are all taken as political prisoners and kept under close watch.  Daniel and three of his friends, whom we know as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were among those taken to the palace.  They were made to be part of the king's court after three years of training in the language, culture, and other aspects of Babylonian life.  Yet from the beginning these four rebelled in the ways they could.  Rather than eat meat sacrificed to the gods of the Babylonians, they refused and demanded vegetables instead.  The vegetarian diet suited these four boys as the guard observed after 10 days of this diet they appeared 'better and fatter than all the young men who had been eating the royal rations.'

Lion, by Albrecht Dürer*

     That is just the beginning.  The book of Daniel is full of the tales of how these young men remained faithful and resisted the command to forget their God and totally assimilate into the Babylonian culture.  Of course the most familiar of these stories include the Fiery Furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Daniel in the Lion's Den.  This week we will focus on the latter, found in Daniel 6.
     In one of the tales of Daniel's rebellion, we find that Daniel has earned the jealousy of some of the native Babylonians, as his service to the king is outstanding and he is getting promoted above them.  They devise a plan in which they ask King Nebuchadnezzar has ordered a decree that anyone who prays to anyone except the king in the next 30 days shall be thrown into a den of lions.  As is the traditional literary pattern, the king does what these men ask, and orders the decree.  Daniel, however, continues to pray to God - going into his room, facing Jerusalem, and praying three times a day.  The conspirators find him in prayer and take him to the king.
     Of course the king really likes Daniel, and is heartbroken that he has signed this decree; yet before throwing him into the den he displays an amount of faith rarely seen even in the Israelites by saying:

May your God, whom you faithfully serve, deliver you!

Interestingly the only words Daniel actually says out loud in this whole account are the morning after he has spent the night with lions, when he lets the king know that he is still alive.  The rest of Daniel's words in the story are silent, or are known only between him and God as they are prayers.
     I wonder what it is about Daniel's faith that King Nebuchadnezzar is willing to pray on his behalf to God, whom we can assume King Nebuchadnezzar knows nothing about.  Was it Daniel's willingness to defy the king's decree that gives King Nebuchadnezzar this new found faith?  Was it Daniel's calm quiet in the face of hungry lions that gives the king hope? 
     Whatever it was, when the king rushes the next morning to discover Daniel's fate, and finds that Daniel is alive, he continues with a tremendous declaration of faith:

For [God] is the living God, enduring forever; 

Whose kingdom shall never be destroyed,

And whose dominion has no end.

God delivers and rescues, 

working signs and wonders in heaven and on earth...

     As I think about Daniel's witness, I am heartened.  Life wasn't exactly what Daniel would have liked.  He was a prisoner.  His people had been destroyed.  His home ruined.  There wasn't much hope in having life return to normal.  And yet in that moment he chose to remain faithful by disobeying the king's decree.  Rather than give up and assimilate, Daniel went against the grain.

     While I don't often think about having to stand fast in my faith in the face of laws against it, I do spend a lot of time thinking about, well, time.  As I look around at other families and think about my own family in the future, I wonder about things like sports, clubs, extracurricular activities, and the amount of time those things can consume.  Children are scheduled 24/7 now, with very little time to actually be kids.  I say to myself that I won't let our family get that way.  I make promises that worship will continue to remain central for us (and for me it will - by the nature of my job and calling as pastor).  Yet I know that when the time comes it will take all of us standing up and going against the grain.  It is not just a dilemma felt by families with children, but this remaining faithful can be a difficult thing for everyone, in whatever stage of life they are living.

     The mystery I am left pondering this morning as I reflect on Daniel is how against the grain are we?  Are we becoming assimilated Christians?  Have we given up with our current circumstances and just said, 'Oh well.  They schedule sports/clubs/music/etc. on Sundays and we just have to live with it or we will never succeed in life.'  Have we in subtle ways over many years, finally become irrelevant to our culture because we've made so many concessions?  It is a mystery of faith - how to live in a world that does not believe in God.  Yet we know our God is living, and that our God endures forever.  Sports don't last.  Music doesn't last. Popularity doesn't even last.  God does.  How are you going against the grain to live this out?

*Dürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528. Lion, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46275 [retrieved February 10, 2014]. Original source: http://www.yorckproject.de.