Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 125 · May 5
Windows Toward Jerusalem
“Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.”
The decree is signed before lunch. Thirty days, no names, and everyone in the Persian civil service can see whose diary it was written around: whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions.
Daniel hears, and goes home. Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. The last four words are the whole account. He did not open those windows that morning.
The direction is not sentimental. When Solomon dedicated the temple he prayed forward into a captivity that had not happened yet, asking that when the people were carried away they would pray unto thee toward their land, the city which thou hast chosen. Daniel is doing what that prayer described, in the circumstances it described, and by his lifetime the house was a burnt site. He knelt toward rubble because the promise had been attached to the place and was not withdrawn when the building came down.
See what his enemies had to do to catch him. They went through his public work and found nothing: they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful. So they said it themselves: We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. The one exposed thing in his life was a fixed hour at an open window.
And on the day the law came for him, the text puts in three quiet words: and gave thanks. What a person does under pressure was settled long before the pressure arrived. There is no time to decide once the decree is signed.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 125 is The Father's Good Pleasure (Luke 12:32).