Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up quickly. He said to his counselors, “Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?” They answered the king, “True, O king.” 25 He replied, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the fourth has the appearance of a god. (Daniel 3:24-25)
One of my favorite Old Testament stories is the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They were resistors while in exile in Babylon. As people who stood up to the despot who ran the country, they risked their lives and indeed, they were sentenced to death for not complying with the authorities. Their sentence was to be thrown into a fiery furnace and burned to death.
In the passage quoted above we see the results of this sentence. Somehow, God accompanies them into the fires and while three people are sentenced to death, they are joined by a fourth person who had the “appearance of a god.”
The lesson reminds us of a basic principle in life. God accompanies us in all things. Sometimes we get circumstances changed the way we want them to change, but more often, hard things stay hard. The struggles and the pains aren’t always removed. But even when it feels like we have been thrown into the fire, God joins us in the pain and struggle and does not leave us to struggle or hurt alone. God’s promises are not that life will be easy – only that whatever life brings us, God will be there to love us through it.
Often, we wish God would simply put out the fires of life, but the cross reminds us that even God is subjected to the pains of life and the reality of death. But the resurrection announces that these things will never have the last word in our lives, no matter how overwhelmed we feel at the moment. God will be with us as we struggle through life.
