Shadrach, waiting to see the king

Daniel 3:16-18

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 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, O king. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

Fear is a real thing, shaking and changing a man, stripping away what he pretends to see and know, testing the soundness of him. Fear is a sharpener, a magnifier, a divider. Fear lets a man know what can be done.

It was fear that I felt when first the walls of security were shattered, when first I learned that to belong to the people of God would not protect me infallibly from physical harm. After all, the God of my fathers offered no protection when the Babylonians came among us, stealing us away from our homes, though each of us belonged to families unstained by idolatry. This was no defense in the confused terror of those days, when the city fell and the invaders were among us like a blazing fire, killing the righteous and the wicked alike. We were the sons of privilege, of nobility, possessing a further security of piousness in an age of idolatry, as well as the words of God, the promises treasured (my father, my father, sharing with me those precious things from a young age, O Lord, I hope in you). Fear was my possession after all those things seem to vanish, and we were dragged to this pagan place.

We came here in fear, but we were strengthened here by hunger.

Hunger is a driving thing, since it is desire feeling the edge of consequence, the movement of idle desire into instinctual grabbing, like a man needing air. We were never hungry in a desperate way, for there were vegetables and water for us, on a daily basis. But we felt our hunger through a deliberate self-limiting that gave us time to examine the very desire, to analyze and understand it. Daniel told us the only purpose of our limiting was to avoid the defilement of the meats and dainties, prepared by anonymous but likely unclean hands, slaughtered and cooked in unclean ways. But the effect on my heart (and on all of us, for we experienced these things together) was to give space for thought and consideration, to examine this desire, for the satisfaction of eating is not a true satisfaction. How can we call it satisfaction if the desire returns and returns? If it was satisfied, it would extend itself in finality, a block set in place, an object fitted for its location. No food eaten can satisfy in a final sense, only give the frustrating illusion that ebbs and flows until it seems to disappear when the stomach is full. We pound our hunger until it no longer intrudes itself upon us, but this is no satisfaction. A desire satisfied, says the proverb, is like a tree of life, meaning that it springs up into delight, joy, fullness, growth.

Hunger responded to dulls. But hunger sustained allows the mind to focus on the desire and understand it, to know it for what it is, not push it down on the backs of rich things and much wine. Desires were meant to be satisfied, not suppressed. Hunger is one desire only. There are others.

O Lord, you give me these meditations in my fear, in my very real fear, for I have feared fire and burning since the first time I felt it, as a lad in the palaces of Jehoiakim when, running through the kitchens, I felt the sting of boiling water on my hand. A small burn only, but with a frightening intensity it focused me upon itself, drowning out all other things, making my world a feeling, all things encompassed in my hand and the pain. It of course faded, as do all pains, but I never ran through the kitchen again.

Pain and hunger are real things. I have felt them for my body is a unity, existing in integrity (that is, its parts integrated into one whole) and though I am composed of such parts, yet there is one man here, one Hananiah (to use my Hebrew name, bless the sound of it), one person in existence. To experience pain is to live as one whose hand communicates. In our fasting, we do not deny or eliminate our desire for food, nor in our defiance of the king did we deny that burning would be painful, or that death would be the result of burning.

When we stood that day before you, O Lord, refusing to bow before the gods of this empty world, we stood in fear, not in boldness, because when I stood my stomach was in pain, my head was rushing, my heart accelerated, my body responding in the unity of itself so that my fear was known to me. It was a fear of physical power, a fear of pain, a fear of burning. What can man do to me? He can throw me down from my position in this kingdom, he can take away the privileges of my life here, he can inflict pain upon me, and ultimately, he can end my life. I have seen death here in this world, even the death of your dear ones, the ones you call precious.

Yet we stood. We had decided we would do it as soon as the decree was announced. There was never any question in my mind, and I doubt there was in theirs. I say I felt fear not to lay forth the primacy of fear, as if this was a controlling passion. It was not, no more than our hunger controlled our eating when with Daniel we kept ourselves pure. To draw back in fear from pain, fire, death, is natural, normal, an element of existence, a rational act, a wise act, wise in the sense that it conforms with reality, that is, truth. To fear is to admit that the outside world is real. Insane men have no fear, but those of us who can order and comprehend the data of our senses must fear.

Lack of food produces hunger, presence of danger produces fear.

So we stood in fear, with eyes looking scornfully on the idol of gold. If we must acknowledge reality with our fears, then our intellect should also acknowledge the absurdity of bowing before some created thing. Our ears heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, the cries of the supplicants (most filled with the pretended zeal of the sycophant, or the real zeal of the terrified), a great noise and confusion pretending to be a show of honor, pretending to glorify something real. We stood in you, O Lord, in that hour, in our fear but deeper in you, for you are the God who is there, that is beyond real, the God that the poets call the Rock, for you are the bottom of all things. You are the one who (so it is said) makes our path broad beneath us, that makes our feet like the feet of the deer.

We stood in fear, yes, we stood in fear. And now we wait in fear, all of us wait in fear for this terrifying interview, the moment when we are brought before the king in his furnace room, the roar of which is already audible. Meshach is scared. Abednego is afraid. We are united in our fear, fear of what comes, fear of the pain of it.

But there is a bottom to our fear. It is the Rock. If we are wise we admit the reality of created things, we enjoy them in proportion to themselves, we fear them in the way of all rational creatures, that is, we respect them for the power each of them possesses. But the fool alone considers them to be his all, and fears them for their own sake. I fear fire for the pain it inflicts, and the nature of the end it produces. But I fear them only in relation to the God who made them, for there is a real real that sits behind the reality of all things, the God who makes them, controls them, orders them, whose power is beyond them. Thus it is said by Solomon that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is the acknowledgement and incorporation of the base truth, the truth of truths, the root of truth, the vine from which it all growths, this alone allows us to consider and order things rightly, and thus to act in wisdom. To stand in him is to stand with our feet on the rock, to be sheltered from all things, and to say, with a new boldness, what can man do to me? Yes he can burn me, yes he can kill me, yes he can throw my life down to the dust, but what can he do beyond the reality of physical things, what can he do in the greater realm in which there is only one ruler?

Thus we stood in fear, but we stood in boldness to. Our eyes saw the decree, and soon they will see the fire, but they see also a greater thing. There is a property of seeing possessed by few (thus David says, open my eyes), possessed by those who say to the Lord, "Your face I will seek" and in seeking it they find themselves satisfied, satiated, content. Thus our boldness, of a different kind from the physical boldness of superior power (though its power is alike superior), a boldness that takes in fear and subordinates it, as we did our hunger in those days past, days I see now were in preparation for these days, days that quickened our heart-eyes so that they could see not the fire but the One who created fire. Our hearts are sharpened so that they go out to One, and that One is the One who picks us up and makes us stand, in our fear, in the face of that which we fear, fills us with a greater fear that makes us bold, and so we speak with the confidence of those who know they must one day die. We will die, why not today, why not in this way? For surely God will raise the dead! This was the hope our father Abraham, and so it must be our hope too.

Now the moment comes. Lord, you may not save us this day, but we see you. Lord, you may see fit to let us burn, but O Lord, we will bow down before none but you. These considerations lay low our fear though it does not lessen, and still our hearts though they continue to pound. The rock yet is under our feet and we will not be shaken.

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Daniel 1 and Daniel 3 contain the story
There are references to many psalms: 119, 56, 18, 27
Proverbs 1
See also Hebrews 11
Ephesians 1:18
Proverbs 13:12