Week 12: Day 4

Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Christie Gilfeather. Each weekday we share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today.

Bible: 'The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been given you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.’

I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.

Thoughts: It is fair to say that Daniel is quite a mysterious text. Why do you think that is? Much of the answer comes down to the type of text, or genre, that Daniel is – which is an apocalyptic text.

The word apocalypse comes from the New Testament, in Greek is literally means ‘uncovering, or unveiling’. So, apocalyptic texts are usually about just this, uncovering. But what is being uncovered? Often when we think about apocalypse films or books, they’re usually about the end of the world. The way in which the end will come us uncovered and often the forces that have been running the universe reveal themselves. The book of Revelation fits well into this category.

But this isn’t the only thing that apocalyptic texts are doing. Often, they reveal the state of things are they are, right then, in the context in which they were written, and make a prophetic evaluation of the state of what’s going on around them.

The book of Daniel is set in a very unsettled and difficult time. The people of Israel had been living as captives in Babylon having been taken away from their land. The Persian empire then came and defeated the Babylonians and the people of Israel were freed but still stuck in between these enormous powers. Many of the beastly figures we see in Daniel are metaphors for these political powers that were at work at the time. Much of the book of Daniel looks at these powers and calls them out, asserting God’s power and sovereignty over everything even in difficult circumstances.

So when Daniel is told that the vision is true, but that he should seal it up for later, we see this ‘now and not yet’ dynamic at work. The book is about the future, about the things to come as well as the things that were currently happening around the writers. It is certainly one of the strangest types of text that we find in the bible, but it also offers powerful and prophetic understandings of God’s power and sovereignty.

Silence: Let’s pause here for a moment of silence to ask God what he might have to say to us through this passage

Prayer: Almighty God, thank you for the wildness of apocalypse and all that is shows us about your power and majesty. Today would you help us to remember how sovereign you are over our lives and over the whole world. Amen.

Action: Every day on Orbit we give you a simple practical challenge to help you put this passage into action in your life. Here's today's: When you think about all of the different types of text in the bible, poetry, wisdom, narrative, law, is there one which sticks out as your favourite? Is there a type of text that you feel like you don’t know very much about? Could you challenge yourself to read something unfamiliar and find out how God might speak to you through it?

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.