Daniel Window

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Daniel 6:10 (ESV) When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.

What it is speaking to me

The king signs a decree with a death penalty attached to prayer, and Daniel's response isn't a social media post decrying the king. It isn't a war room meeting with fellow believers about how they should respond. He goes home, opens the same window he always opens, and prays. Three times a day. The same as always.

That last phrase is the one that stood out to me today: "as he had done previously." It was not because it's dramatic, but because it's the opposite of dramatic. Daniel doesn't invent a bold new act of faith to meet this crisis. He just keeps doing the thing he was already doing before anyone was watching or threatening him.

At least in the realm of social media, christians faced with a crisis seem to do something new and visible, something that feels proportionate to the size of the perceived fear.

Daniel exemplifies a different truth: the window that saves you in the crisis is the window you'd already been kneeling at for years. The habit was never really about the moment it got tested. It was about all the ordinary mornings before that. To put it a different way, I can't be sure that I will have Daniel's courage on the day the lions show up if I haven't been building that habit on all the days before it.

What is it saying to you?

What's your "window," the ordinary practice of prayer or faithfulness you keep open regardless of who's watching or what it costs?

If a real cost were suddenly attached to your faith today, would your response be to build something new, or simply to keep doing what you'd already been doing?

What are we going to do about it?

Open your own window today. Go to whatever place and practice of prayer you'd normally do, and do it as you have done previously, on purpose, threat or no threat.