If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:17-18
This is the really unpalatable bit.
This is the really difficult crux of Scripture, of the love of God, of what it means to worship love and God, that—if we have the sense to recognize it for what it is—should bring us to your knees. Should stop our tongues from trite truisms.
To love God is no light thing.
To love God more than we desire for God to save us is no light thing.
And here, I suppose, is where one might argue primly that we are saved, that we know we will be saved, that it will really be all right, so isn’t it fine in the end? Isn’t it easy, then—like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3:18—to face the fire with joy? This isn’t really a big deal if you believe, is it?
And to say that I say: maybe it isn’t, if you devalue suffering. But we mustn’t.
Let me talk about fire.
I had an uncle, whom I knew my whole life: a man of great temper and great appetites, who managed to be simultaneously charming and monstrous. I watched him rage at his long-suffering wife, sleep red-faced with alcohol in the recliner, even as I knew he was a local hero in his hometown and beloved by his neighbors and his community. Red hair, red face, red flannel shirts.
The day after Christmas a few years ago, he drove out to a piece of property he owned to burn the Christmas trash. In a deep pit in the ground, he stacked up cardboard boxes and old wrapping paper, trash bags of Christmas dinner remnants and twist ties, and then set it ablaze. Satisfied with the bonfire, he climbed back up into the truck bed to throw in another bag.
No one exactly knows how it happened. He slipped, they think. He had the back of the truck down, set a foot wrong, and then tumbled backward into a pit of fire so deep he couldn’t pull himself out. A friend was alerted to the crisis by the sound of his screams.
He was flown to a burn center.
To die by burning is a terrible, agonizing, miserably painful thing. My uncle passed away an entire month after the event, after such suffering that I marvel his wife could endure observing it. When the news finally came that he had died, we all—from wife to nieces and nephews, to weeping neighbors to ambivalent friends—agreed that it was a blessing. That’s how awful it was.
And with that knowledge I turn to these men of faith, who acknowledge that such burning could perhaps be their fate. I don’t think they took it lightly. They had faith they would be saved, were certain they could be saved, and yet acknowledged that such an outcome might also not be in the cards. Whether or not God enacted this intervention on their behalf was, to them, largely irrelevant.
God is my God, whether I live or I die.
Or, perhaps, as Job would put it: Though He slay me, yet I have hope in Him.
And this, this is the miracle. This is the faith that gives God joy. That frail and fragile beings can look into the face of suffering from which they may not be spared and say, “It does not matter.”
Here is the question: will you choose God with indifference to all other things, even your own comfort and well-being?
This is the last barrier of selfishness. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want things to go badly. I don’t want to be uncomfortable or sad, or burdened or aching, or to cry into my pillow at night. I don’t want IVs, or hospital beds, or accidents, or searing grief. Forget chains and prisons and stoning and fire: I get tetchy over migraines and losing my keys.
And yet the haunting refrain of Scripture is always the still small song from God: Am I alone enough? Am I alone enough for you?
This, I think, in the end, may be what God most wants to know from us. It is the stark reality Job was forced to confront. It is what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego willingly face the fire to acknowledge. It is the aching heart behind Jesus’ question to the disciples, when many leave because of the difficulty of the teachings: “You do not want to leave too, do you?”
I fail this question every single day. Forced with a choice between God and my comforts I default to my comforts often without even thinking about it.
I wake up. I try again.
That God knows this about me and forgives me and loves me despite that is a marvel.
But it is because He knows. The God who asks us to follow Him in spite of our circumstances, the God who wants obedience and surrender in all things, also know what He is asking us to surrender, and to face, and to fear. Whatever Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego recognized might await them God also faced—not just from the cross, but from an oppressive state, and more broadly from the powers of darkness and hell. Unlike His children, He did not spare Himself from it.
I think about this, often.
And so what I pray more and more these days is this: I don’t know if you’re enough for me. I want you to be, and sometimes I act like you are. But when I look at myself, I don’t often act like that’s true. I’m ashamed of it and sorry for it. But I also want you to know: What I know of You makes me want You to be all that I want. And I know You can help me to become the person for whom You are the only thing that matters.
Make me that person.
I love you enough to want to be that person.
This is my prayer for you, too.
May we face the fire, count the cost, and say: Whatever God does or doesn’t do, doesn’t change who He is or who I am or how we are.
Forever and ever, amen.
Samaritan's Song 