The Revealer of Mysteries

Several days ago, I began reading the book of Daniel.  Each morning as I flip to the next chapter, I pray for opened eyes to behold wonders out of God's law and that He might teach me something about Him.  It has therefore been a thrill.  This is what I've praised and thanked God for thus far:

• Chapter 1:9 God's ability to give Daniel favour in the sight of the Gentiles in whose charge he was.
• Chapter 2:5, 11 How an impossible, inevitably fatal situation comes upon all the wise men of Babylon -  perfect conditions for God to show His glory!
• Chapter 2:20-22 Wisdom and might belong to this God.  He is in charge of all things in the universe - times and seasons, kings and rulers, wisdom and knowledge.  He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.
• Chapter 2:28 ... there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries!  
• Chapter 2:47 This wicked Gentile king says to Daniel the Israelite, "Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries..."
• Chapter 3:17 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego asserting hearty faith in the God who is able to deliver them from the fiery furnace, confidently leaving the matter in His hands either way.
• Chapter 3:27 The detail of there not even being the smell of the fire on them when they come out of the furnace.  Complete and perfect deliverance down to the very details.
• Chapter 4:17, 25, 26  The desire for all the living to know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men.  Heaven rules.  God is in charge, over all. 
• Chapter 4:35 "All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand or say to Him, 'What have you done?'"
• Chapter 4:37 The King of heaven... whose works are right and ways are just.

Now, might I join Nebuchadnezzar in saying, "It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me" (4:2).  That will be the purpose of this blog.  Now, while I account myself as nothing, a bit of dust, like anybody else in being merely pinched off from a piece of clay, I am also one in at least 8 million that could have been here instead of me, and aren't.  That was the only race I ever won.  N.D. Wilson points it out in his book Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl: "We are a world of lottery winners. For every one of us here right now, in every begetting, there were at least 7,999,999 losers.  They didn't even know how almost they were" (40).  With all this talk of God being in charge, over all, it's safe to say that He wanted me here.  Thus I must have something to do or say worth doing or saying. 

What could be more worth saying than that my Father of lights is worthy to be praised!  Consider: this awesome God who is in charge of the universe has so much regard for this bit of dust, that instead of wrath and gaping fire, which I rightly deserved, He gave me His perfect love and repose of soul.  Instead of raging hell and eternal anguish, which I rightly deserved, He gave me an eternity of glory as my boundless horizon (these dichotomies taken from The Valley of Vision).  All this how?  All this by the suffering work of Jesus Christ on the cross, proved by his powerful, glorious resurrection.  Is it any wonder that I love Him?

So when I deserved nothing but outer darkness forever for my sin and because I hated this Fairest of the Fair, everything I now know and enjoy and don't enjoy as much in life is grace.  Therefore, "Gratitude is all-important.  Everything is a gift.  Every smell, every second, every ice cream dollar.  Gratitude for the whole story, from beginning to end, gratitude for the valleys and the shadows that lead us to the novel's final page" (Wilson again, 181). 

And so it shall continue, by His grace, this counting of gifts, marveling at God's grace, and striving to press in to know Him. Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; His going out is sure as the dawn; He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.  ~Hosea 6:3