“In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.” – Daniel 10:2-3
Daniel 10 reveals another one of Daniel’s visions just a few years after the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Medo-Persians, in the third year of King Cyrus. He’s experiencing something called complex grief – he’s mourning and can’t eat, and it feels like an avalanche of burdens and bad news. It’s not a sin to be overwhelmed or struggling to process everything, but I would encourage you to receive information in a way and time frame in which you can process it and not let it overwhelm you with our 24/7 news cycle.
Daniel is anxious, maybe even depressed, and he is lamenting. When you allow yourself to lament, you allow yourself to feel because you don’t want to become numb. You allow yourself to process your pain in the present and your fear of the future. When you lament, you tell God what you’re afraid of and struggling with, and He can comfort you. Lamenting can also help you realize any ways in which you contributed to your negative situation. You’re also able to empathize and sympathize with others who are hurting because, sometimes, when we’re hurting, we can become selfish. As he laments, Daniel can’t control the future, but he can invest in his character.
In this vision, Daniel sees a divine being, possibly an angel. He reminds Daniel that he is greatly loved and tells him not to fear. He’s struggling but not self-soothing with alcohol, food, or sin. He is getting a lot of bad news and is fearful of the future. But he didn’t conclude that this is personal or that God is attacking him or hates him. And just to remind him, the angel tells him how greatly loved he is. This word brought to Daniel is true for all the children of God. God loves you, and when life is hard and you are scared, He still loves you.
It’s important to note that Daniel was praying, fasting, and crying out to God for three weeks. Have you ever felt like that? You’ve been asking God for something, and it feels like you hear nothing. Is it that God doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or is too overwhelmed to answer you? Absolutely not. Things are happening that you may not be seeing but that God reveals. Daniel has been praying for 21 days, and the angel says it’s taken him exactly 21 days to get there because he was fighting against demonic spirits to arrive. We often think God is delaying or not hearing us, but we need to remember there’s an entire unseen realm affecting what happens in the seen realm. Here, God is opening up understanding from His perspective to encourage us during our seasons of crisis.
Come back tomorrow where we look at eight ways Daniel made it through his crisis.
How can you lean on God’s strength instead of giving in to fear?
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