Free to Live

Story of the Day for Friday March 19, 2016

 Free to Live

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. . .the king should issue a decree and enforce it that anyone who prays to any God or man during the next thirty days – except to you, O King – shall be thrown into the lion’s den. 

Daniel 6:7

You know how political power struggles work, don’t you?

The ancient ruler, Darius, appointed three people to rule under him. He then appointed 120 satraps who would be accountable to these three rulers.

Daniel was one of the three rulers under king Darius, but he displayed such exceptional character that Darius was planning to increase his authority.

The satraps, however, resented Daniel’s emerging influence so they looked for ways to tar his name. If they could get the goods on him, they could, perhaps, convince Darius to curb his authority.  But they couldn’t find anything. Daniel was a man of integrity.

Then Daniel’s underlings finally came up with a dastardly plan. Why not use Daniel’s character against him? He faithfully follows his God. Why not make his loyalty a crime?

The satraps, (those miserable, pinch-faced little weasels), persuaded Darius to issue an imperial edict that anyone caught praying to anyone but king Darius would have his body torn to shreds by the lions.

Daniel was a man of conviction, and continued to pray to God.

Elijah Lovejoy was a journalist and then became a Presbyterian pastor. He returned to the press because he wanted to reach more people. After witnessing the lynching of a black man, Lovejoy committed himself to the repeal of slavery.

Mobs threatened Lovejoy. They repeatedly destroyed his printing presses, but he would not be silenced. “If by compromise is meant,” he wrote, “that I should cease from my duty, I cannot make it. I fear God more than I fear man. Crush me if you will, but I shall die at my post . . .” Four days later he was murdered.

Holding to our convictions in the truth of God doesn’t mean we will always be spared from the jaws of the lions. We might be delivered; we might be martyred. Holding to our convictions means that we are living for something greater than ourselves, and we don’t have to be consumed with re-calibrating our values based on our own self-interest. If we have nothing worth dying for, we have nothing worth living for.

Daniel refused to budge in his loyalty to the Lord, and God used this, in the end, to prosper Daniel and to have Darius’ kingdom “reverence the God of Daniel.” Elijah Lovejoy refused to back down, and he was killed. But one man, newly elected to the Illinois legislature, was deeply moved by Lovejoy’s convictions against slavery. And who could guess that in the years to come his signature would ratify the Emancipation Proclamation.

When you live by your convictions you are free to live – and let God worry about the results.

 (text copyright 2013 by climbinghigher.org and by Marty Kaarre) 

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