“No other god can save in this way.” (Daniel 3:29, NIV)
It was only last Friday’s devotion when I offered these words: “Rory McIlroy may be scuffling…” To give you the full background, it was almost simultaneous to my setting up that devotion and Bible study the day before that I noticed McIlroy was playing well in his opening round. A closing double bogey kept me from last-minute edits, though. After all, that round was McIlroy’s first below par in more than a month on Tour. Scuffling was the right word.
Little did I know about the lesson McIlroy had received from putting strongman Brad Faxon. Little did I know that Rory would finish the week at better than 10 total strokes gained-putting. (For comparison, the best putter on Tour so far this season, Jason Day, averages about 1.3 strokes gained-putting per round—or 5.2 per tournament. McIlroy nearly doubled that for the week.)
You probably don’t need golf, or its statistics, to tell you how quickly life can change. In a phone call, your world can flip upside-down. Or maybe downside-up.
The familiar account of three Jewish stalwarts and a rash Babylonian king are one of the Bible’s ways of reminding us how true this is. The American humorist Garrison Keillor once joked of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie novels that chores never lasted more than a sentence. Sometimes writers don’t flesh things out as much as they should, but the rapid progression of Daniel 3 is almost dizzying.
The Jewish men—known usually by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—are proven leaders in the land of their exile. Then the king, Nebuchadnezzar, erects 90-foot statue and sends out word that all should bow down to the statue or stand in risk of being tossed into a blazing furnace.
The trumpet call sounds, the men don’t bow, the authorities report them to the king, the king calls them in and explains again their choice; they turn him down, saying they’ll instead entrust their lives to “the God we serve.” The king orders the furnace fired to the seventh level and the men are tossed in, with their sure death before them.
Understand, all this is told to us in a matter of mere paragraphs.
But it’s not over.
A fourth man appears, one who “looks like a son of the gods” and they all walk around in the fire like it’s nothing more than a spring day in the Iraqi desert. The king is stunned and calls them out of the fire. They are unscathed and unscorched. And the first words out of Nebuchadnezzar’s mouth when he looks the men over? “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!… No other god can save in this way.”
The work God would do in bringing Nebuchadnezzar all the way to him was far from done (read chapter 4!). But in a blinding succession of moments God had taken men left for dead and brought them out to life so that he could take an idolatrous king and make of him a God-fearer.
Your life may change by tomorrow morning. But what is true in your life has no effect on what is true about God. He does not change and he will earn his praise, just as he did from Nebuchadnezzar. How will what’s next for you cause you to worship him all the more?
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Jeff Hopper
March 20, 2018
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.