Deliverance

I haven't even looked at this blog for a long time, but I thought of something awhile ago. It's just a little something, but I am going to put it here.
It relates to this song, a spiritual, and the question raised in it:

"Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel
Deliver Daniel. Deliver Daniel
Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel
Then why not every man?"

It proceeds in verse number two...

"He delivered Daniel from the lions' den
Jonah from the belly of the whale
The Hebrew children from the fiery furnace
Then why not every man?.."

I can imagine the slaves singing it as they hoed to its rhythm, asking with heavy hearts that ached for freedom and the dear homes from which they had been so rudely ripped, the question it posed. "Why not every man?"

And I have pondered it too. I have. And once while I was thinking on it, something occurred to me.
God did indeed deliver Daniel from the lions' den, but He did not deliver him from slavery. He was pulled unharmed from a pit full of ravenous lions to continue living life as an exile in a strange land.

And Jonah, after the "whale" saved him from a watery grave and disposed of him properly on dry land, did God hand him a beach towel and a pina colada and steer him to the shade of the nearest palm? Nope, He sent him to preach damnation to Ninevah, that great and wicked city, same as He had sent him before.  And Jonah did it.
 It would not be pleasant having to do that down Main Street in Bible-belt-burg, never mind Ninevah, where they already hated him and he hated them, and maybe had a good dose of fear of them as well. But that's what Jonah faced after his "deliverance".

The three Hebrew children emerged from the fiery furnace without as much as a whiff of smoke about them to continue the life of slavery they had known before, just as Daniel did.

But these things they knew:  God saw them. God loved them. God had his hand on them. God was in control.

We too have our Babylons; we have our Ninevahs. We have circumstances from which we cannot escape, and responsibilities from which God does not rescue us.

But we also have our moments of deliverance, where we can see His tender and powerful hand touching our lives in extraordinary ways.
He tucks in miracles amid the madness.
Sunbeams now and then, dance in the shadows.

And we too can know that God sees. He loves us. His hand is on our lives. And He is in control.

That is true for every man. And enough for any man.