The Lord's Mercy is Best Seen ...

March 9th
Daniel 9:4-10
4 I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed: "O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, 5 we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. 6 We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. 7 "Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the men of Judah and people of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you. 8 O LORD, we and our kings, our princes and our fathers are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. 9 The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him; 10 we have not obeyed the LORD our God or kept the laws he gave us through his servants the prophets.

When I was a child, Daniel was one of my favorite Biblical characters. Maybe that was partly because my father was named Dan and my grandfather was named Dandridge, but I think it was mainly because I was growing up as a member of a minority religious group within a majority culture and identified with Daniel as an exiled Israelite who became a high government official in the kingdom of Babylon during the captivity. Daniel owed his high rank to his ability to interpret the king’s dreams, as well as omens such as “the handwriting on the wall,” which is still an item in our own vocabulary.
The first part of the Book of Daniel is a narrative of his life. The reading for today is from the second part of the book, which contains Daniel’s own dreams, or prophetic visions. The passage is part of his prayer for understanding of Jeremiah’s prophecy of the end of the Babylonian captivity and the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem, after they have expiated their sins which were the cause of the exile in the first place. The answer to the prayer is a visitation from the archangel Gabriel, who expands Jeremiah’s prophecy.
We all have dreams. Some of them are trivial, some of them are evil nightmares, and some of them are idealistic. I believe that every one of us has at least one important idealistic dream, the first example that leaps to mind being, of course, what Dr. King had in mind when he said, “I have a dream,” which might not be all that different from Daniel’s vision of the return to Jerusalem.
Of course making the dream come true might not be easy. And for many of us discovering exactly what our most important dream is might be even harder. King Nebuchadnezzar might have lived a long time ago, but he wasn’t born yesterday. When he called on Daniel and the soothsayers for the first time, he told them he expected them to tell him not only what his dream meant but ALSO what he had dreamed. If they could do that, they would receive great rewards. If they could not, they would be executed. Anybody can interpret a dream. Identifying a dream is a different ball game.
–Bill Brown

Prayer-God, help us to remember that we see the Lord’s mercy best in the face of our own sinfulness.