Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.

When I was in high school, there was a lake nearby that we spent a lot of time at during the summer. None of us had a boat or did a lot of fishing, but there was a train bridge that went over the lake, conveniently located for a bunch of 16-year-olds to jump off. I already know what you’re thinking. Yes, I grew up in the South. No, there wasn’t anything else to do.

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I went out one day with a group of people thinking I could just hang out and no one would capitalize on my crippling fear of heights by pressuring me into jumping off the train bridge. But it was high school after all, and I was the only one who hadn’t jumped. Before I knew it, I was on top of the bridge, then quickly in the air, then deep underwater from the 30-foot drop. I literally jumped off a bridge into a lake because all of my friends did it.

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I was (and still am) terrified of heights, and I hated every second of this experience. But what I see looking back on this is an entirely different fear: I was more afraid of not fitting in. Once the situation became about what people might think of me, even with something as dumb as jumping into the lake, that fear became much larger in my mind. My reaction wasn’t to face that fear by not jumping, it was to cave to that fear, trying to look like someone I wasn’t.

Our reaction to fear can tell us a lot about what we’re putting our hope in. Do we run away, never actually dealing with our fears? Do we go to something else, like alcohol or shopping, pretending that what we’re afraid of isn’t real? Or do we run head-on into our fears because we know there is One who is with us?

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Daniel was faced with this decision while he was in Babylon. He had been taken to Babylon when Jerusalem was conquered, but he went from being a prisoner to almost running the entire kingdom. There were Babylonians, however, that wanted to see Daniel thrown into a literal lion’s den so that he would be killed and they could get the power that he was being given.

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But the only way they could do this was to make it a law to not pray to anyone other than the king of Babylon, because they knew how devoted Daniel was to his God. Surely, he couldn’t go 30 days without praying. So how did Daniel respond to any fears he may have had of being thrown into the lion’s den? Did he face them head-on?

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In Daniel 6:10 it says that he not only prayed, but he went home, opened his upstairs window, and prayed to God so that everyone could see. Rather than being fearful, Daniel chose to be faithful. He faced fear head-on because he knew that God was with him in the midst of it. He could have lived fearful and done what he was told to avoid any pain or discomfort. But he knew being faithful to what God had asked him to do was a much bigger deal than caving to his fear and becoming someone he wasn’t meant to be.

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Daniel did this because even though he knew the reality of his circumstances, he also knew that God was bigger than his circumstances. When he put things into their rightful place, his reaction to fear was to turn to God in prayer.

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There can be a million different reasons we let fear keep us from praying: fear of praying “wrong,” fear of what God might ask of us, fear of what others might think if they knew we pray. But Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Prayer reminds us that even if we are afraid, God is greater than whatever it is we might fear.

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If our reaction currently is not to run to prayer, there is still hope. Just because it hasn’t been our reaction in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t be today.

God, we acknowledge that we have fears that can come between ourselves and you. We know there is something right now that we’re afraid of, but we want to remember that You are always greater than our fears. You have always been faithful even when we didn’t ask, and you will remain faithful. Help us to make prayer our reaction to fear, to not be swayed by what happens in our lives, but grounded with our foundation in you. Thank you, God, that you are the only one who is truly greater than our fears. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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