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.”
King Darius has signed a new decree. It will last for thirty days, and it names no one. Yet everyone at court can see whose daily habit it was written to catch: "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 about it 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 end of that verse tells the whole story, because "as he did aforetime" means he did what he had always done. He did not open those windows that morning for the first time.
Facing Jerusalem was more than a feeling. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he prayed ahead for a captivity that had not happened yet. He asked God to hear His people when, carried away to a foreign land, they would "pray unto thee toward their land," toward "the city which thou hast chosen." Daniel was doing exactly what that prayer described, in the very situation it described. By his time the temple was a burnt ruin, so he knelt toward rubble, because God's promise had been tied to that place, and the promise was not taken back when the building came down.
Look at what his enemies had to do to catch him. They went through all his public work and found nothing: "they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful." So they admitted it among themselves: "We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God." The only opening they could find in his whole life was a fixed hour of prayer at an open window.
On the day the law came for him, the verse adds something quiet: he "gave thanks." What a person does under pressure is settled long before the pressure comes, because there is no time to build a habit once the decree is signed. That is why the prayers you pray on ordinary days matter more than you know. They are how God makes you ready, and the God Daniel thanked at that window is the same God who later shut the lions' mouths.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 125 is The Father's Good Pleasure (Luke 12:32).