Not what I asked for...

This isn't what he'd wanted: darkness, cold stone, chains on his ankles...and the rumble of a score of ravenous animals lurking in the shadows.

He had every reason on earth to doubt God. The edict of days before, that no one was to pray to any god save the king himself, the penalty being death at the mouth of the lion: why, Lord? He had served God in this, the land of Israel's captivity; and faithfully, at that. And true, God had raised him up to second in command over all the kingdom. But...why?

Every day, faithfully, he had opened his window. Every day, three times, he knelt with his face toward his homeland and prayed. 2 Chronicles tells us why: perhaps you've always thought it was because of the various calls to worship that used to issue from the temple; or maybe simply for the sake of praying with his mind fixed on God, rather than facing anything in Persia. But the real reason behind his place of prayer is much deeper.

"If they sin against thee, (for there is no man which sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their enemies, and they carry them away captives unto a land far off or near;

Yet if they bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried captive, and turn and pray unto thee in the land of their captivity, saying, We have sinned, we have done amiss, and have dealt wickedly;

If they return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, whither they have carried them captives, and pray toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, and toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for thy name:

Then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people which have sinned against thee" (2 Chron. 6:36-39).

Solomon pronounced the blessing on the temple, the brand new house of God. And Daniel surely knew the whole prayer, possibly even by heart. In praying toward Jerusalem, he was, in effect, requesting that God bring them back. Save them. Restore them. Heal their land.

Instead, he was thrown in a lion's den.

Rarely has a prayer been more apparently rudely dashed and disappointed.

And yet, in the morning, Daniel could still say, "MY God has saved me."

It wasn't what I asked for...

And yet it was God's will.

And in the end, the story is more beautiful than if the lion's den had never happened.

So too will mine.

So too will yours.