Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
1In the year of the third to
Cyrus the king of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel, who was called [by]
his name Belteshazzar, and the word [was] true and a great conflict/burden, and
he understood the word, and understanding [was given] to him in the vision. 2In
the days of those, I, Daniel, was mourning three sevens of days. 3Bread
of desires I did not eat and meat and wine did not come to my mouth and
anointing I did not anoint [myself] until were full the three sevens of days.
I think it worth stopping for a minute and thinking about our friend Daniel. As I have often said, the Bible is a book of discipleship. It is on the one hand a book of truth (like Daniel’s vision) and we should certainly be alert to those truths, but, at the same time, it is provided to us in the setting of human lives. That said, some of those people make good decisions and some make bad – and it is of great value to learn all we can from them. They show us how all those truths work out in daily life.
Here we see our friend Daniel. He provides us with a profound prophecy of the future. Yet we see the man Daniel who provides it. As we have often noted, Daniel is no young hotshot. He says this is the third year of Cyrus. That means it has been 73 years since Daniel was hauled off to Babylon. If he was 15 at the time, that makes him 88 years old. If he was 20, it makes him 93!
It is crazy to me to note that his life spanned the Babylonian Captivity. Note he was just the right age to be one of the “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning…and qualified to serve in the king’s palace,” whom Nebuchadnezzar had charged Ashpenaz to gather (1:3,4). Now, some 73 years later, we find him still alive and actively serving the king and his people.
My point would be to note, as it says in Psalm 139:16, “All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” Daniel was born specifically to be who he was. The Lord’s plan for his life was for him to be born of the royal family in Jerusalem, then to be hauled off to serve in the court of the Babylonians and to live through the entire Captivity. He was born to be there in the highest echelons of Babylonian government, to be God’s man in the very epicenter of evil in this world. We can all be quite sure that wasn’t Daniel’s plan as a young man. He no doubt had plans for a career – what trade he would learn – and probably had his eye on some cute Jewish girl he would marry, have a family, and live and die there in Jerusalem. One day all of that got uprooted and instead, he lived out his life in a wicked city, serving as the chief of the warlocks!
One wonders what wrestling of faith he had to go through, to accept that this was the Lord’s will for him. Then I wonder if it isn’t true of all of us – that life doesn’t turn out “like we expected?” I would guess, in many ways, we all have to go through those same “wrestlings of faith,” to finally come to grips with this reality – that this was always God’s plan for us, this “ALL the days ordained for me…” Like Daniel, we may not know why these things had to be. We may deeply wish it all could have been different. Yet, we must trust in the wisdom of our Heavenly Father that He has put us in the best possible life to do the most possible good for Him. The Jewish people needed a Daniel high in that government. Our Daniel was chosen to be that man. You and I are chosen to be who we are and, like him, we must come to accept our Father’s will.
Even I myself, as I sit here, wish Daniel could have been allowed to marry that cute little Jewish girl, have his family, and live a long, happy life in Jerusalem. Of course, in my mind, I think he deserved it. What an awesome guy he is. Yet that wasn’t the Lord’s will for him and, I have to admit, I’m glad he was where he was, so we have a book of Daniel to read and from it to learn so much. Then I look around and there are so many people I wish I could rewrite their story too. Joni Erickson comes to mind. She’s just a little older than me, so she basically has been there my whole life always, always, always encouraging me and all of us to trust the Lord and serve Him with whatever lot He gives us. I wish she didn’t have to be a quadriplegic; but then, I feel it would have been a terrible loss not to have lived all these years with her example always there in the background of my life. I could go on and on with other examples that come to mind, but I’m sure you have a multitude yourself.
I guess it’s a good thing I don’t run the universe, huh? It all just makes me want to sit back and exclaim with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33). It’s a good thing HE runs the universe! As the old illustration goes, all of us are always looking up at the underside of the tapestry. All we see is the tangle of all those different colored threads. He is the only One looking down and seeing His amazing design becoming more and more that beautiful tapestry He has planned from the beginning!
So may we all learn from Daniel and from the Joni’s of our world to trust the One who orders our lives, who, as the Bible says, “determines the times of our lives and the exact places where we should live” – “so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him…” (Acts 17:27). Though we may wish we could rewrite our own lives, let us lay aside our “darkening counsel without knowledge” and embrace the life He has given to us. Then, like Daniel and Joni, may we joyfully trust the One who sees the end from the beginning and wait our turn to go and join Him (and Daniel and Joni) in that world where “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain…” (Rev. 21:4).
In literal Hebrew, Prov. 3:5,6 says:
“Trust (be recklessly confident, live in a state of unconcern) upon the Lord in the all of your heart,
and do not rely on your understanding.
In the all of your ways know Him,
and He will make your paths straight.”
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