Daniel

The guest pastor put a transparency on the overhead projector. An image of a noble, ancient warrior was projected to massive proportions on the pull down screen.  He was large and bare chested with a thin crown circling his head and perfect, shoulder length ringlets.  (The image, not the speaker.) His face was handsome, fierce, and terrifying. This was in great contrast to the projection of the speaker’s weak, elderly voice in the microphone as he spoke of feet of clay and forgotten kingdoms while the giant warrior loomed over his right shoulder in the darkened sanctuary.  

I looked around the church, there was a small crowd tonight.  Only the familiar faces of the core “inner circle” came to Sunday night service here at First Baptist.   My Dad would often lead Sunday night hymn sings and knew how to work a crowd. He always picked the rousing hymns we could all sing well and everyone would be laughing at his corny jokes between songs. The whole event made you feel warm and somehow tender towards all the other Sunday nighters. Tonight’s exegesis of Daniel was no hymn sing and it had me squirming in my seat.

It was 1974 and I was 13, sitting near the back of the church with my church friend Debbie.  Her dad was also a deacon which meant she had just as many attendance awards as I did and came to most Sunday night services as well.  We were allowed to sit together as long as we didn’t get giggly or disruptive.  We usually drew pictures and wrote notes on the back of the visitor cards but tonight I was listening.  There was something about the dim room and the way the guest speaker spoke.  I felt as though he were deciphering some holy secrets specifically for we, the faithful Sunday nighters. I leaned forward. I tried to focus. I knew it was from Daniel but this was not the lion’s den story I was all too familiar with.  He was talking about blazing wheels and strange beasts, rivers of fire and sealed books.  I was confused.  More than confused, I was scared.  I looked around and everyone was blandly attentive as if this was a completely ordinary Sunday night service.  How could they all look so calm?

This was some kind of deep magic, terrifying and unknowable.  I was off balance and out of my depth.  I didn’t sleep that night, Daniel’s vision haunted me that night and well….ever since.  I can see the slide of the fierce warrior in my mind’s eye right now, 40 years later.  

I am not really sure if it was my church’s particular emphasis or only my selective listening but I grew up with a lot of fear concerning God and Salvation.  I was never quite sure if I was one of the “elect” and everyone else’s complete confidence always troubled me.  There was a lot of teaching about end times, a lake of fire and everlasting damnation with that particularly disturbing detail of “gnashing of teeth”.  I selfishly prayed that God would refrain from returning until I could experience some of the milestones of life, next week’s birthday party, getting my driver’s license, my first kiss. This imminent end times ideology did make me a zealous missionary as a child. I signed all of my friends up for church camp but I was motivated mostly by fear.  I asked Jesus into my heart weekly if not nightly, just to be on the safe side.

Around this time I received a Christmas present from my scandalously divorced and shunned, Uncle Don.  The gift was C.S. Lewis’s book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  This was an allegory written for children and the Christ character is a great Lion who willing dies at the hands of the evil White witch to save the children. I cried with the Lucy character when I read of the humiliation of the blameless lion being bound, shaved and killed.  I rejoiced when he rose from the dead to romp and play with young Lucy.  This was something I could connect with.  I pondered this in my young heart for a long time.  Was it sacrilegious to imagine Christ as Aslan the great Lion, or was this a breakthrough on my way to understanding the true love of Christ? I had memorized the verse about God sacrificing His only son for me but it had never really stirred any emotion in me. Now remembering the fictional lion’s sacrifice, my head bowed with true reverence in prayer and not just in compliance to family tradition.

Much of the unapproachable “Ancient of Days” God of my youth and even the beautiful, golden Lion, has been replaced by a joyful, vibrant young gardener God. The image of God walking through His garden in the cool of the evening refreshes my soul. I see him searching his tender plants for signs of the flower bud forming.  Rejoicing in all stages of the fruit ripening. He even invites me into the process as He reveals trouble spots and direction for the garden that is my life.  He delights in all that he has made.  He delights in me.   

Until now I have successfully avoided studying the mystical, vision-filled books of the bible and have always prefered the poetical, historical or practical bits.  However, I have been feeling the pull of my gardener God to revisit some of these teachings and dally down the road of a more mystical faith.  I am finding many people of faith combine practical care of the world and those in it with the deep magic of the mystical side of God and faith.  So after 40 years and many incarnations of my understanding of God, I am now ready to explore what so many Christians before me have known.  Confident in the love of the vinedresser beside me I will look into the eyes of that fierce, stone warrior and ask “What have you to teach me?”