The Den Where the Lions Forgot to Eat

Do you know what it feels like to do the right thing and get in trouble for it anyway? To be good and brave, and have someone want to hurt you for it?

Daniel knew that feeling.

Daniel lived far from home, in Babylon, where God's people had been carried away. And Daniel loved God. Every day, three times a day, he went to his window, the one that looked toward home, and he knelt down and prayed, morning, noon, and night. He talked to God the way you talk to someone you trust completely. The way you talk to someone who loves you.

The king liked Daniel best of all his helpers. And that made some other men jealous. Oh, they were jealous. They watched Daniel. They wanted to catch him doing something wrong.

But Daniel never did anything wrong.

So they made a brand-new rule. A wicked, sneaky rule. For thirty whole days, nobody could pray to anyone but the king. And whoever did would be thrown to the lions.

The lions.

Daniel heard about the rule. And then Daniel did exactly what he always did. He went to his window, he knelt down, and he prayed, morning, noon, and night, just like always. He was not trying to be stubborn. He simply loved God too much to stop talking to him.

The jealous men ran to the king. "Daniel prayed! Throw him to the lions!" And the king was sad, so sad, because he loved Daniel. But a rule was a rule, and he could not take it back.

So they took Daniel to a deep, dark pit full of hungry lions. Long before, jealous brothers had dropped a boy named Joseph into a pit, and God had not forgotten him there. Now jealous men lowered Daniel into a pit of their own. They rolled a heavy stone over its mouth and sealed it shut, and there he lay, closed in the dark with the lions, where no one could reach him.

But someone could reach him.

God could not bear to leave Daniel alone in that dark. He sent his angel down into the pit, gentle as morning light, and the angel shut the lions' mouths. The lions forgot to be hungry. They lay down beside Daniel like big sleepy cats, and they kept him company all night long.

Up in the palace, the king could not sleep. He could not eat. He just lay awake, aching, waiting for the morning.

And in the very first light of morning, he ran to the pit. He ran. He called down into the dark, his voice shaking. "Daniel! Was your God able to save you?"

And out of the dark, a voice.

"I'm here. God sent his angel. He shut the lions' mouths. They didn't hurt me at all."

They rolled the stone away. They lifted Daniel out, alive. Out of the deep dark pit, into the morning sun, without a single scratch.

Now hold onto that picture. A good man sealed in a place of death behind a heavy stone, and then the morning coming, the stone rolled away, and someone walking out alive.

Hold it close, because it is going to happen again, and when it does, it will be bigger and better than this.

One day there will be another good man, the only one who never did one single wrong thing. He will be sealed in the dark behind a great stone. And on a morning brighter than any morning, the stone will roll away, and he will walk out alive, into the sun, forever.

Daniel was rescued from the lions. That other man will walk out of death itself, and he will leave the great stone lying open behind him, because death will not be able to hold him.