In today’s Rooted Reflections, we finish Daniel 6 and celebrate God’s deliverance of Daniel from the lions’ den. But the story points us toward something bigger than Daniel’s rescue: his faithfulness to God also led him to seek the welfare of the foreign kingdom where he lived. Like Jeremiah’s call to Israel in exile, Daniel reminds us that following God does not mean withdrawing from the world around us. We can worship God first, trust God completely, and still work faithfully for the good of our communities—even when we find ourselves in difficult or uncomfortable places. Wherever God has placed you today, work for good.
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Good morning. It’s good to be with you on this Thursday morning. I hope you’re doing well today.
Our week continues to roll along. It’s almost the weekend, y’all. We’re getting close! I’m excited about this weekend. We’re going to be feeding the Starkville Academy football team tomorrow night, and that’ll be a lot of fun. So, we’ve got a good weekend ahead of us.
Today we’re going to finish out Daniel 6 and see the conclusion of the story of Daniel and the lions’ den. We know what’s going to happen. Most of us are familiar with the story. But let’s read it again and see what we can unpack from it.
The king gets up at the break of day and hurries to the lions’ den. When he gets there, he calls out anxiously to Daniel:
“O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you faithfully serve, been able to deliver you from the lions?”
And Daniel answers:
“O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.”
The king is exceedingly glad, and Daniel is brought up out of the den. No kind of harm is found on him because he had trusted in his God.
And then Darius makes a proclamation throughout the kingdom that everyone should tremble in fear before the God of Daniel, because this is a living God whose kingdom will never be destroyed. He delivers and rescues. He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth. He has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.
And then we get this great little ending:
“So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.”
Yesterday we saw Daniel being thrown into the lions’ den. The king was worried about him. And today we see what happened: Daniel was spared. The Lord protected him.
And this story feels to me like a parallel to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Very similar stories. They are judged for doing the right thing. They are thrown into situations where, by all appearances, they should have died—and yet they don’t. God protects them.
Daniel is punished for doing the right thing. He is thrown into the lions’ den, where you would expect him to be eaten. But God protects him. And now Daniel is taken care of and restored to his position.
But there’s something in Daniel’s response that really caught my attention.
Daniel says, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.”
That got me thinking about what the Lord told Jeremiah when Israel was taken into exile in Babylon. God told them to pray for the welfare of the city to which they had been sent, because the welfare of that city would be their welfare as well.
And Daniel is living that out.
Notice that Daniel doesn’t come out of the lions’ den angry at Darius.
He doesn’t say, “Why did you do this to me? Why did you abandon me? Why did you let this happen?”
He doesn’t complain to the king.
Instead, he says, essentially, “I have done right by God, and I have done right by you.”
He honors Darius as king, even though Darius is a foreign king. Daniel is living in a foreign land. He doesn’t particularly want to be there. Jerusalem is where he wants to be. The Holy Land is where he wants to be.
But he finds himself in Babylon and Persia, and so he is faithful where he is.
And I think that’s something we need to think about in the world in which we find ourselves.
Like Daniel, we may sometimes feel like we are living in exile. We live in a world that isn’t always the way we would want it to be. We live in communities, states, nations, and cultures where not everything lines up with what we believe.
And it can be tempting to withdraw from that.
It can be tempting to say, “Well, this isn’t the way it ought to be, so I’m just going to pull back. I’m going to keep everything at arm’s length. I’m not going to engage.”
But Daniel shows us another way.
Daniel worshiped God first. He was willing to face the consequences for worshiping God. But at the same time, because he worshiped God, he wanted what was best for the place where God had put him.
He wanted Babylon to prosper.
He wanted Persia to prosper.
He wanted the people around him to prosper.
And that’s what Jeremiah had told the people of Israel: Work for the welfare of the city where you find yourself.
I think those two things can both be true.
We can trust completely in God’s protection and provision, while also working for the good of the communities where God has placed us.
God will not leave us.
God will not forsake us.
God is with us.
We can trust in God’s goodness—even when things don’t go the way we expect. And if something difficult happens to us, we can still trust that God is with us in the middle of it.
But at the same time, we have a calling to work for the good of the places where we live.
My hope for Historical First is that our church becomes an essential part of the well-being of the city of Starkville.
I hope Starkville cannot imagine itself apart from the work and ministry and presence of First United Methodist Church.
And I think that should be the prayer of every church.
That every community we find ourselves in would be better because that church is there.
Daniel worshiped God first, but because he worshiped God, he wanted what was best for the people around him.
And maybe today you find yourself somewhere you don’t really want to be.
Maybe you’re in a difficult place.
Maybe you’re in an uncomfortable place.
Maybe you’re in a challenging season.
Maybe you feel like you’re in exile.
Work for good.
Even if you wind up in the lions’ den, work for good.
Even if the old saying is true that “no good deed goes unpunished,” work for good anyway.
Because we don’t work for good because it always profits us.
We don’t do the right thing because it always makes our lives easier.
We don’t serve, care, love, and bless others because we’re guaranteed something in return.
We do it because it’s the right thing to do.
So bless your community.
Bless your state.
Bless your nation.
Bless your family.
Bless your neighborhood.
Bless the people who live on your street.
Work for good wherever God has placed you.
And when we do that, I think we begin to see something of God’s goodness poured out.
Look at what happens in Daniel’s story. God takes this moment of testing and suffering—even the lions’ den itself—and turns it into a testimony to God’s goodness.
Darius says, “He is the living God. He delivers and rescues.”
Daniel’s faithfulness became a witness.
And maybe that’s part of what God wants to do through us.
So today, work for good.
No matter where you find yourself, work for good.
Work for the good of your community.
Work for the good of your people.
Work for the good of the people you love.
And, yes, even work for the good of the people you don’t particularly love.
Because our welfare is connected to the welfare of the places where God has put us.
So let’s work for the good of our cities. Let’s work for the good of our communities. And let’s trust that as we do that, we will see more and more of God’s goodness and abundance.
So thanks be to God.
Work for good today, no matter where you find yourself.
And we’ll pick up tomorrow in Daniel chapter 7.
Now, this is where it gets interesting.
This is where we get into all the parts of Daniel that I really don’t understand very well—the prophecies, the visions, all of that stuff.
So, oh boy. I need to do my reading and get ready for the next few days because I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood a lot of what’s coming.
Good times!
Watch and listen to Rooted Reflections as you watch Andy get increasingly confused.
Have a great day!