When faced with bared teeth

But they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him.  Daniel 6:4

“Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it ... even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord God.  Ezekiel 14:13-14

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. Daniel 6:10-11

 One of Alan’s questions at our Community Cafe Saturday night for the sundry folk gathered around the backyard table, huddling near the first fireplace of the season, under the infamous white knit blankets was this: Who is someone who walks well, who manifests the Life of Christ as a model to follow?  And we heard the list of regular suspects: Mother Teresa, Francis of Assisi, and Mike Begley, twice.  

The Prophet Ezekiel shared God’s Top Three List of Those Who Lived Rightly with a people who had lost their understanding, with a people whose values and priorities had been so roundly infected with those of the surrounding society that a great stench rose up that demanded purification, justice. 

And to me, who sometimes loses sight of what’s what, it is good to be reminded. Of what right living entails.  Here we see that Daniel was faithful, blameless before God and man, and thankful.  

And when circumstances swelled over and up out of control, signed and sealed with the irrevocable law of the Medes and Persians, beyond all possible hope and despair, Daniel knelt down before God and gave Him thanks.  

And I am reminded that Jesus told the healed leper that faithful and thankful were the same thing.  Faith is demonstrated, put into action, through the action of praise.

And the result of this faithful action of thankfulness?  

Daniel was delivered from the roaring circumstances.  Through no belabored action plans or disciplined personal finesse or wit, but by the clear hand of God.

And the name of the LORD God was lifted up, for He is the living God, enduring forever.

He will be known.