Sitting With the Lions

In the fall of 1998, the REACH house was a remodeled Victorian mansion in inner-city Columbus, Ohio, complete with a basement apartment, a main floor for cooking, eating, and socializing, an upstairs where the girls stayed, and an open attic-turned-dormitory where the boys slept. A wide front porch served as another hang-out spot, and the carriage house-turned-classroom in the backyard was the place where we held our training sessions. 

Twenty-eight of us lived there, not counting the director and his wife. It was full, noisy, crowded, and fun. And it was really, really difficult to find any place to be alone. Given the nature of the program, every morning we had a scheduled "reflection time." It's where all twenty-eight of us grabbed our Bibles or our books or our musical instruments and scattered as far as we could scatter from each other and still remain on the property... and we would take designated, purposeful time to spend in God's word and in prayer.

Looking back, we had to get creative with space. One girl crawled out the second-floor window and sat on top of the porch roof cover for her time. Another girl used the linen closet on the second floor. It wasn't unusual to walk by on the way to one of the bedrooms, see the light coming from beneath the door, and hear her voice lifted in song. 

I've got to admit, twenty-three years might have tampered with my memory, but I have a strong impression that there were stone lions on either side of the stairway leading up to the house, and they became my "spot." The stairs were lined on either side by a stone wall with a large flat space on top of it, and I am almost sure two lions rested heavily on the area and looked out at the passing street traffic. I would crawl up on the wall with my Bible and use them as company as I shaded my Bible from the bright morning sun.

The area wasn't quite as private as I would have liked, but when all the nooks and crannies in a house are already taken up, you do what you can. :) 

It was at the REACH house that I learned the importance of constancy in spite of all circumstances that dictate otherwise. It sure would have been easy for me to let it go, snuggle on a couch three feet from my friends, joke, laugh, relax. Those are good things to do; I'm not discounting them. Socializing with my twenty-seven other housemates was one of the highlights of my REACH training.

But daily time spent with the Shepherd, the Creator, my Sustainer is top priority.

Today, I went back to my Exodus reading. I'd taken a break from it so that I could focus on Holy Week leading up to Resurrection Sunday; now I'm back.

I've got to say: the portion I'm going through -- it's a hard row to hoe at parts. In Exodus 29 where I am today, I got the specifications for the consecration of those in the priesthood. I read all about the sacrifice of the bull and the two rams, the blood, the burning of the meat, the eating of the meals... and I looked up at my ceiling and said: "What are you showing me here, Lord?" 

I know Jesus is our once-and-for-all sacrifice, and that because He died on the cross for us, in our place... we no longer have to do the things described in Exodus 29, because He's already done it for us. Forever and always. Praise Him!

He led my attention back to the chapter, and I noticed Exodus 29:42-43 again. It says: "For the generations to come, this burnt offering is to be made regularly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the Lord. There I will meet you and speak to you; there also I will meet with the Israelites, and the place will be consecrated by My glory." The word regularly sort of leaped out at me from the page.

Over in Psalm 5:3, it says: "In the morning, oh Lord, You hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before You and wait in expectation."

One thing I'm guilty of, and boy, do I know it, is being too busy. I've got too much on my plate: grad work, teaching, blogging (now vlogging, too), mothering, wife-ing... when is the "wait in expectation" time supposed to happen?

Honestly, it's easy to push it aside. It's easy to pick up my Bible, walk into the room where I normally have my prayer time, sit down, slam the book open, close my eyes, point to a verse, nod sagely over it, yes, yes, and amen... and walk back out.

There's no wait in expectation. There's no constancy. 

How many of you, in 2020, found your plate suddenly cleared? *Raises hand. Before the pandemic, I remember dreading Thursdays, which were scheduled from early morning until I fell into bed at night with stuff. Besides school, we also had back-to-back piano lessons and karate lessons for three kids, and there was no down time whatsoever, besides the two minutes I had to toss bookbags in the door and run back out the door with: "We're going to be late, kids, get back in the van! Bathroom breaks at lessons!"

When I think of constancy... I think of Daniel in the Bible. Three times, every day, he kneels in front of his open windows that face out toward Jerusalem. The thing is, he doesn't worry about outside factors. This is his holy time; this is his time he's set aside to spend with his Maker. Even when the king's edict comes out that no one is allowed to pray to anyone but the king, he ignores it, goes to his spot, his prayer place, closes out all other sounds but the One to Whom he listens... and prays.

So what happens as a result of his faithfulness and constancy? He gets to spent the night, trapped in complete pitch blackness, in a den sealed with a stone that has the king's own seal over it "so that his situation might not be changed" (Daniel 6:17)... with some hungry lions.

Something happens that night: the Lord meets Daniel in that place. He meets His faithful servant in the spot where death waits, and He holds it back -- "because [Daniel] was found innocent in His sight" (Daniel 6:22). 

What other innocent Man was placed in a hole in the ground, sealed behind a rock, and had the seal of the governing authorities placed over the rock so that His situation might not be changed? What other Man met death... and came out alive on the other side of it?

I get it: the circumstances and the men I'm referring to are different, but the point I'm making is this: God meets us in the darkest places, the spots where there is seemingly nothing between us -- and the enemy. He fights our battles for us, and He saves us from death.

Well, no, Tamara, He doesn't. My best friend/daughter/husband/wife/neighbor/insert-name-here died because sad-thing-happened.

I know. I get it. It's hard to look past this finite perspective of our days here on earth. Can I offer this? The fiery trial isn't the end of the story: It's the curtain that veils the end. Now we can ask God to let us skip over that fire, veer away from the fire, or walk through that fire. But the fire is going to be there; it's just the nature of life in a sinful world.

Let me jump back to Daniel 3 where there are three other guys, friends of Daniel, also faithful, constant men of God who refuse to bow down to an idol built by the king. When the king calls them to stand in front of him, he demands an explanation. He points to a fiery furnace he's built just especially for people who -- if they answer as these guys are getting ready to -- will be tossed in without a second thought.

The three guys answer the king: "Oh Nebuchadnezzar," they say, "we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, oh king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, oh king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up" (Daniel 3:16-18).

This furnace, for the record, is so hot... it fries the guys who dump these three men into it. In other words, it's not a little candle flame that's going to leave an ouchie. And thus, it's not easy for these men to say what they said. They say it... while hearing the hiss, crackle, and pop of the flames. They say it... while feeling the heat warming their arms and faces. They say it... while seeing the dancing reflection of the light on the king's angry expression. They say it... while smelling the campfire smell that always accompanies burning wood, knowing that they could soon be a part of that scent. I did four senses; I may as well go for five. They say it... while tasting the ash that thickens the air.

This situation engrosses them. It surrounds them. It is an all-consuming situation. And God meets them in the middle of it.

"Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, 'Weren't there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?' They replied, 'Certainly, oh king.' He said, 'Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods!'" (Daniel 3:24-25)

Do you think... Aaron and his sons in Exodus would have been allowed to enter the holy presence of God if they had decided to leave their post at the Tabernacle and neglect the instructions the Lord had set up? We're getting ready to read about something Aaron does that is highly displeasing to the Lord in a few chapters -- but he doesn't get to bop off without any consequences. The Lord pulls him up short: You have been consecrated. Later, Aaron's sons, too, neglect to fulfill some of the Lord's instructions, and they die as a result. 

God takes the time and constancy of consecration seriously. 

Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego -- they devoted themselves to the Lord. Do you think Daniel would have exited the lion's den the next morning in one piece if he hadn't been so constantly with the One he worshiped? Do you think that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would have answered the king as they did if they did not spend constant time with their God? 

If these men did not find it important enough to devote their mornings (or their evenings or whatever time of day they chose) to the One they worshiped, if God was a passing thought to them, do you think they would have laid their lives on the line for Him?

My stone lions never hurt me -- but it was more likely that they were, you know, stone, and not living and breathing and... hungry. But they were excellent reminders to me of Daniel's constancy, his purposeful, intentional, daily, every day, every day, prayer. 

Relationship. Listening, talking, making room for Him.

2 Timothy 2:13 says: "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself." His very nature is faithfulness. "His compassions never fail; they are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).

He is constant in His love and faithfulness for us, and He asks for constancy from us. It doesn't mean we aren't going to mess up. I remember dozing off behind my lions a few times on some sleep-deprived mornings and waking with a start, embarrassed to find quiet time had passed and our morning sessions were starting. 

But I was in that space. Sometimes it's a hard thing to do -- making that holy place -- but it's essential if we are to find the courage to face the enemy who watches and waits with his lion's den and fiery furnace. 

If we don't make God our top priority, how easy will it be to slide sideways from the point?