I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 1-2.

I have always liked the story of the four friends described here.  I am sure that part of that comes from the fact that I was taught this story from a young age and that these four young men were held up as examples for me to emulate.  And they are indeed people whom young people should be taught to emulate.   We have here four young men who were yanked out of their comfortable lives as the future leaders of their nation and taken to live out their lives in a foreign land.  In this foreign land, they were set up, along with many of their peers who were brought from their homeland with them, in a life of luxury, but with high expectations upon them.  They could have joined with their fellow ex-patriots and enjoyed the luxurious food and drink offered to them.  After all, there is safety in numbers.  Instead these four chose to be faithful to God and stand out from the rest.  We should do likewise.

In the second chapter, King Nebuchadnezzar believed that his advisers, who claimed extraordinary powers, were scamming him.  So, he required them to not only interpret his dream, but to tell him what it was.  They told him, accurately, that only the divine could answer his request.  For whatever reason, Daniel and his friends were not part of those to whom Nebuchadnezzar made his request, but were part of the group who Nebuchadnezzar planned to execute for their failure.   There is much to be learned from Daniel’s interpretation of the king’s dreams, but I want to focus on the way in which Daniel handled this circumstance.  Daniel asked his friends to ask God to tell them the answer to Nebuchadnezzar’s demand. Then, when God had given him the answer, he praised God.  Daniel gave all of the credit to God as the repository of all wisdom and all knowledge.  Daniel made clear to Nebuchadnezzar that his ability to tell Nebuchadnezzar what his dream was and to interpret it was not because he, Daniel, was somehow better than others.  Our willingness to trust God’s grace does not make us superior to others, just more blessed, a state which others can have by accepting the gift of God’s grace.