Deeper Reflection
It is one thing to be prepared to pay the cost of discipleship, but quite another to actually pay it, especially when the cost is very high. What was going through Daniel’s mind and how was he feeling as he was being led to the lions’ den?Before Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den, Darius said to him, “Your God whom you constantly serve will Himself deliver you” (v.16). Daniel’s thought might be, “God is speaking to me through the king. I am very certain about it”, or “Perhaps, God is speaking to me through the king. I am not sure”. Surely, Daniel recalled God’s miraculous deliverance of his three friends in Daniel 3. Would Daniel be expecting God to likewise deliver him? I believe Daniel held the same conviction as his three friends: God can and will deliver, but He may not deliver (Dan 3:17-18). Walking by faith is a certainty accompanied by “not knowing where he was going” (Heb 11:8).I doubt that Daniel was cool and steady with an absence of any feeling of fear or anxiety. Jesus journeyed to the cross with “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished” (Lk 12:50). This mysterious divine-human distress was real. But there was the peace of God in Jesus (cf. Isa 26:3). However, “Biblical peace is not often a general tranquility but rather a rightness at the centre in the midst of much turmoil.”⁵ That “rightness at the centre” is the persevering steadfast faithfulness to the faithful God enabled by God’s all-surpassing power (2 Cor 4:7).

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⁵ Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Samuel, Focus on the Bible (Christian Focus, 2000), 213