Daniel, and other captives from the land of Israel, didn't always have spectacular days no matter what they've taught you in Sunday School. That word captive gives you an idea why. They had sinned. Judgment had struck. They were stuck in Babylon, but they hung on through their own type of captivity as they prayers of Godly men made their way to heaven.
We are often held captive by our own sins. I think we can agree on that position.
But even in the midst of our personal kind of captivity, I suspect we have had some of those sort of hours, minutes even, when we awake to find the wind has spewed a bit of warmth from the south. Maybe we can feel, oh, just a few fabulous moments of suspended time. Maybe we remember a time when a Saints receiver got his foot down in bounds in time for a fabulous, unexpected win, or one of our kids made an A on the pop quiz or our spouse's eyes dared stare deeply into ours with commitment and a sudden, insane amount of love. Earthly surprise after surprise comes as God blesses us in unknown and shocking new ways.
Maybe we can remember a few ragged, absolutely astonishing minutes when a gust of God's wind filled our dying sails, or had us sort of pulling the fat ol' home-made blanket up to our neckline as you nestled there on a cold morning without end. Work and worry can always wait, but smiles in God's time should never be put aside. They're too valuable.
Maybe we grasped that time when everything wrong built up. We suddenly understood that God blesses the last ones, the least ones, and though we were often a solitary leaf looking for a complimentary pile, we also knew that in the worst of moments, God's mercy could be like a summer afternoon rainstorm, like a gallon of sweet tea poured over our laughing face. Mercy, His mercy, takes away those staggeringly bad days.
After those God-fiven rains, the steam rises from old country roads. Then God mocks evolutionary thoughts, laughs at our meager creativity, grins at emergency room antics, and with a bit of flourish, I think, like a painter drunk with gallons of Red Bulls and filled with tons of imagination, he shoots pictures of HIS sky with a yet-to-be numbered pixel camera. HD? Come on, man. It's God shooting, drawing, painting, rainbowing. Beauty isn't in the eye of the beholder, it's in the eye of GOD.
Hear the Word that comes from the experience (in Daniel's ninth chapter): "I (Daniel) went on praying, confessing my sins and the sins of my people Israel and pleading with the Lord my God to restore his holy Temple."
One sentence, but a bloated one. Daniel prays. Daniel confesses HIS sins. Daniel confesses HIS PEOPLE'S SINS. Daniel pleads, begs, gets on the horn, pulls out the cell, digs out the number, and seeks time with the LORD HIS GOD so that HIS HOLY TEMPLE might be rebuilt.
Once sentence, but one filled with good stuff, huh?
Then, while Daniel was praying, pleading, confessing, begging, Gabriel (the scriptures tell us and Daniel) came FLYING DOWN to where Daniel was.
This morning as I plunk on these keys, it is dark outside. Still. It is 6:42 a.m. this moment, right here, right now as the song Here I Am To Worship plays, and there are only a couple of ribbons of light forcing their way into the darkness as if they were screwdrivers. Two years ago this day, I was seated outside the Garden Tomb just outside the walls of old Jerusalem in Israel. I could tell you about time and time change and all that but I never understood it while we were there, so I won't.
We had been taken inside the tomb to see what certainly appeared a spot that our dear Lord Jesus could have been placed after his crucifixion. In a sign of the times, my cell jingled like a cat chasing a bell. I knew immediately. I knew. A wonderful, wonderful trip was damaged instantly. My daughter, Carrie, was calling to let me know the status of my beloved dog Frankie. Dear Frankie was killed by something as simple as un-digested cat "litter" and something as terrible as cancer in the kidneys. He died on this day, or night as the case might have been, due to kidney complications.
Frankie was my bud, friend, brother. Jerome K. wrote of dogs, "They are superior to human beings as companions. They do not quarrel or argue with you. They never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation." They are love and they are pain. They are help and hurt. They are the most giving of beings.
Two years is such a short period of time, but it seems an eternity since Frankie was next to me running his long nose under my hand to make me raise it and pet him. For such an unselfish being, Frankie sure could be selfish.
In the Message, Job says: "Human life is a struggle, isn't it? It's a life sentence to hard labor. Like field hands longing for quiting time and working stiffs with nothing to hope for but payday. I go to bed and think, 'How long till I can get up? I toss and turn as the night drags on -- and I'm fed up.
"God, don't forget that I'm only a puff of air," Job cries to the sky. "And so I'm not keeping one bit of this quiet, I'm laying it all our on the table, my complaining to high heaven is bitter, but honest. Are you going to put a muzzle on me, the way you quiet the sea and still the storm?"
Honestly, to this minute I hurt most by the fact that I wasn't there when Frankie died. I wasn't there to hold him as he took his last breath. I'm fully wracked with guilt that since he was smarter than David Lettermen and funnier than Jay Leno, he might have wondered 'where is he? Where is my master.' I wasn't there. I wasn't. For all my talk to him about how much I loved him, I wasn't there when it counted most.
Since Frankie died, we've doubled our efforts to save animals. We've brought in dachshunds Breezy and Copper and cats Rocky and the two outside adoptees, Catty and Miss Kitty. We've made sure the squabbles among the saved animals are small ones. We've fed and watched over and done everything we can for all we can.
But none of them are Frankie. I know none will ever be.
But that's fine. It truly is. My complaints are few even as my ministries grow.
I've grown closer to God through suffering, I expect. But perhaps I'll never grow as close as my man Daniel. I love his prayer, "O Lord our God, hear my prayer and pleading. Restore your Temple, which has been destroyed; restore it so that everyone will know that you are God. Listen to us, O God; look at us and see the trouble we are in and the suffering of the city that bears your name. We are praying to you because you are merciful, not because we have done right. Lord hear us, Lord, forgive us. Lord, listen to us, and act! In order that everyone will know that you are God, do not delay. This city and these people are yours!"
As I finished typing this portion of Daniel's long prayer, Shout to the Lord begins to play and it carries through.
I've told a couple of times my favorite part of the Israel trip. We were on the Sea of Galilee, with gentle waves and a sky stacked with thick white clouds as if they were boxes in a storage shed. As our boat rode one wave after another, we talked and talked and looked at the far mountains and thought of Jesus.
Then the boat's captain hit a switch and music joined us. First, Awesome God, my favorite contemporary Christian song played then Shout To The Lord fought through the mist-thickened air. Ear to heart, heart to soul.
We were on the water that Jesus walked on, on the water that Jesus rowed through and our praises like waves flooded the moment. Would Frankie be alive if we hadn't gone to Israel? Probably not. Would Frankie be whining right now, standing on skinny black legs, front one's scratching my bare legs, asking to be picked up and set down in my lap? Probably not.
That's not the point of any of this. The point is, "Daniel, I(Gabriel) have come to help you understand the prophecy. When you began to plead with God, he answered you. He loves you, and so I have come to tell you the answer."
All this, every step, every tear, every substance, is about Him, not us. Him. He loves us, and that simply has to be enough. Shout it. Pray it. He is awesome, well, he is beyond awesome. That in itself is awesome.
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