December 18

Sleep Fled From Him

I will be praying for you. It is what people say when they have run out of things to do, and it can sound thin even when it is entirely meant. Here a king says his own version of it, telling a man his order has put in a den that the God he serves continually will deliver him.

Everything he can command in that scene answers to him, and the thing he actually wants belongs to God. He spends the night fasting and sleepless, and he is up very early. All of that is love, and it does not move Daniel an inch.

The king commanded, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the den of lions. The king said to Daniel, "Your God, whom you serve continually, will deliver you."

The king went to his palace and spent the night fasting. No musical instruments were brought before him, and sleep fled from him. He rose very early in the morning and hurried to the den of lions.

Then Daniel said to the king: O king, live forever. My God has sent his angel and has shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me, because innocence was found in me before him. And before you also, O king, I have done no hurt.

Daniel 6:16, 18-19, 21-22

Daniel's first words to the man who gave the order are a blessing on him. Then he names who kept him. God sent his angel, God shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt him. He gives his innocence as the reason and adds that he has done the king no hurt either, which is generous, coming from inside a den.

Hold the two of them in one night. One spends it going without food and without sleep, and whatever he does for Daniel he does from where he is. The other is in the den. The distance between what a ruler wants and what his position can reach is the ordinary condition of power. The Advent claim is that God's kingship carries no such distance. He is born into the world he rules, with a mother and a birthplace, and he has governed it from inside ever since.

That kind of night is kept where you already are. It has an address in an ordinary week: the far side of a door, the end of a phone call, a decision that belongs to someone who has not asked you. Going there early and often is worth doing, and so is a night you spend hungry over somebody's name. What this passage credits with keeping Daniel is God, sending and shutting, while the palace learns nothing until the morning.

We do more of our Decembers at the palace than in the den. If Advent sets you down at an edge you cannot cross, the God it is about is on the other side already, and he did not get there by hurrying.

You kept a man the king could not reach, Lord. I bring you the ones I am carrying and the places they are. Hold me where my part ends, and be inside what I cannot enter.