As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
23To
the God of my fathers, giving thanks and praising You, I [am];
because You have given to me the wisdom and
the power,
and now You have made known to me what we
asked from You.
You have made known to us the matter of the
king.
I think I could write volumes on this verse. What we have
before us in these few short words is a living model of everything believers
ought to be. And I want to point out, in particular, that this is not the
picture of some monk cloistered away in a cave or even a pastor or missionary
in their office. This is a man who works a secular job just like the vast
majority of believers always have and always will. Here before us is a divinely
inspired picture of a real believer living in a secular environment, living out
his faith as he faces the challenges of a real world. Also note, he is exactly
where the Lord wants him to be – just like the majority of believers – living
that faith literally swimming in a sea of unbelievers, of people who
desperately need to know the grace and love and redemption of his God.
Seriously, this might take several posts.
First I want to camp on Daniel’s identification of the Lord
as “the God of my fathers.” I think it very important to note, in a sense,
where Daniel “came from.” We’re only half way through the second chapter of
this book and already we have observed that this is one exceptional young man.
Not only does he in fact know the Lord, but he already, even as a young man,
exhibits exceptional qualities of faith, courage, respect, humility, and a very
strong work ethic (Babylon U’s valedictorian of 602 BC!). Where did he come
from? Did he just fall out of the sky?
The text tells us nothing about Daniel’s upbringing or his family,
so anything I suggest is admittedly conjecture. For all we know he could have
been the orphaned child of a couple of hopeless drunks. However, when Daniel
begins his praise calling the Lord “the God of my fathers,” I rather think we
have good reason to believe he saw his parents as models; that he saw his own
faith as a continuation of something which had long run in his family. Of
course, the “fathers” could be simply referring to the Jewish race itself, but
again, I don’t think it at all unreasonable to believe that Daniel has in mind
his immediate family, his parents, grandparents, and beyond. In support of this
suggestion, I would point out the very good and godly Hezekiah was told that
some of his own descendants would be carried away to Babylon to serve in that
king’s court (II Kings 20:17,18), and that prophecy was given to him only about
100 years before Daniel was born. It is very likely Daniel could count that
godly king as one of his recent ancestors!
So I don’t think it unreasonable and in fact I think it highly
likely that Daniel has his own family in mind. In further support of this
conjecture, I want to point out that the words “To You, the God of my fathers …”
actually start this sentence in
Hebrew, and the 1st person pronoun “I” is the last word, as I tried
to convey in my fairly literal translation above. Also of note is that the word
“I” is emphatic, in that, in Hebrew it is normally just part of the verb and
doesn’t get expressed. When a Hebrew speaker did include it (which Daniel does), they were intending it to be in
some way emphatic, which is why I’ve underlined it in my translation above. In
this sentence, the first thing on his mind is “the God of my fathers,” and he
is humble enough to put himself last, but it is himself. He is singularly aware that this is his own experience,
apparently in his mind very much lived out as an expression of a family faith
that has long preceded him.
And it certainly is no stretch to imagine this young man
Daniel remembering watching his own parents living out their faith, trusting
the Lord through hard times, and, as a family, seeing His faithfulness again
and again. If he knew his grandparents, perhaps he saw this in them too, or at least
heard stories of their faith and that of earlier ancestors. His family had
trusted God again and again and found Him faithful. Now the young man is out “on
his own” and has just lived that same faith, trusted that same God in his own
very personal trial, and gets to see that same faithfulness, that same
miraculous providence -- and even as his heart moves him to say “thank you,”
all that heritage of faith and the realization of it wells up in his heart and
he calls out to “the God of my fathers.”
Fast forward to 2017. Here I sit, ready to turn 60 in less
than six weeks. I have three grown children (plus one in Heaven) and four
grandchildren (hopefully that will swell to 50 or 60, J). I find myself living
in the awareness that my life may soon be over. I had my chance. I was young
once. I’ve lived what is probably the majority of my adult existence. At this
point, without question, the single greatest desire of my heart would be for my
descendants to know the Lord like I have, to love Him, to enjoy His grace and
kindness and patience and guiding hand, to personally know and experience that Jesus
is in fact “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life,” that “this is eternal life,
that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou has
sent” – that they could perhaps see him too as “the God of their fathers.”
I have to sadly say that, in this life I lived, I’ve done a
very poor job of living faith. I’ve taken too many wrong turns, too often plunged
ahead in misguided arrogance when I should have waited on the Lord, listened
too often to the wrong people, and, in short, would hardly classify myself with
the kind of people I believe Daniel’s parents had been. So I’m on pretty shaky
ground to hope my descendants could quickly and easily identify with “the God
of their fathers” because of me. The problem today for me (and everyone else,
for that matter) is that I can’t change the past. I can’t re-write the story. It
is what it is. In light of that, one hope I have is that at least maybe my life
has been a story of redemption – of the Lord’s patience to have picked up the
raw material of my life and to have at least brought me to where I am. I wish all
of my descendants could know the Lord early and, like Daniel, live a lifetime
of strong faith, but perhaps, like me, some will make very bad decisions early
and then need the same redemptive God I’ve known.
On the other hand, I do feel like, in the last seven years
or so, I finally at least got on some kind of level ground. For years I was
very aware, like Jacob and the angel, I was “wrestling in the dark.” Too many
things didn’t make sense, which, if someone reads my last post, they will understand
how utterly torturous that was for me. Although I still have a LOT of
unanswered questions, I feel like now I’m wrestling in the light, that somehow I know God’s heart in a way I never
understood before, and I hope I live a stronger faith because of it. So, maybe
in my waning years there will be something worth remembering.
Regardless of all that, I want to say I think we greatly
underestimate the influence of godly grand-parents. Of course, everyone would
be quick to highlight the importance of godly parenting, but I want to suggest
that there is a power, a magic, in a grandparent’s influence that I fear goes
almost unacknowledged. Someone once asked a group, “If one of your grandparents
had written a book, how many of you would read it?” and every hand in the place
shot up. I believe there is something very stabilizing, very enduring, very
worthy of emulation, in a grandparent’s example to us. When we hear they were
hard workers, it makes us want to work hard too. When we hear how they were
frugal, of good decisions they made, there is some kind of power there that
draws us to be like them. And I suspect their faith is just as alluring.
Where did this Daniel come from? Did he fall out of the sky?
I don’t think so. I think, knowing something of life, and based on the very
words he spoke, that his faith, even in his own mind, was an expression of a long
line of godly examples. For us who live today I would suggest there is great
hope that, even if we have lived a less than exemplary faith, yet our faith is
in a great God who can, if He wills, give beauty for our ashes, that He very
well can take what few things we perhaps did right and call our children, and
grandchildren, and hopefully great-great-great-great grandchildren to know this
“God of my fathers.” Prov 13:22 says, “A good man leaves an
inheritance to his children's children …” May the Lord Himself be the
inheritance we each pass on.
As feeble and faltering as we may all be, let us fall into
the arms of our redeeming God, do our best to try to leave behind an example of
faith, and trust to Him that even after we’ve long lain moldering in our
graves, He might be a God of great blessing to our descendants. The plain,
simple fact is that most of this work must be accomplished after we’re gone. While
we’re still here, let us love with His patience, do our best, and, as our own
human experience draws to a close, may we (confidently) leave the work in His able
hands.
It worked in Daniel’s life. God hasn’t changed. It will
still work today. May it work in our families, O God of our fathers!
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