Thursday, March 15, 2007
Lent Reading Day 20
The Fiery Furnace:
Daniel 3:1-30

This is one of my favorite stories of the Bible...and has my favorite name - Meshach. I'm amazed at how the wise and all-powerful king is so quickly stumped, surprised and succumbs to the experience of true power. The story is grounded in the topic of faithfulness and obedience. What does it mean to be obedient to what you believe is true? What might it cost for you or us to be faithful to the call of God for our lives and in our world?

I don't know if I could step in the furnace like those three young guys... Did they assume they'd die? Were they not afraid of dying? Did they expect God to save them from the fire? Were they ready to die? In any case I'm sure that they didn't expect what happened to happen. It all leads me back to the question of obedience....am I willing to be obedient to God's call of and for me? Do I even want to? When things get sticky, costly, and sacrificial...how faithful have I been in the past?; how faithful am I today?....what will I be like in the future? It seems like were surrounded by a culture in which the easy-way-out is the best option, or that we choose what feels good in the moment....I do that with my cell phone plans, making a purchase a target, or deciding what I'm going to eat at a given meal. But those extra minutes, the debit cards totals, and the extra trans-fats do all add up...they do have cost....you can't simply move our total-due from one credit card to another forever. I'm not talking about the fear of the trumpet call and the fires of hell....but the consequences of my actions, the results of my decisions, the ripples that my person, passion, and purpose make on the water surface of life, the communities I live within, and in my own personhood. Asking if I'm (or you're) faithful or obedient is the easy, false piste question to ask....what's harder to answer is the question...where in my (our) life (lives) do I not want to be faithful, or refuse to be obedient? And why?