What happens when the bottom falls out of your world? Where do you start when everything that gave you your meaning and identity is taken from you and the past is brought to a crashing full stop? The fall of Jerusalem, the sacking of the Temple and exile create the setting for this remarkable book.

All power has limits. This is a fact often denied by tyrants and yet self-evident. A person may control the world outside but not their inner world. By day they may be all powerful, but who is king over their dreams?

Face to face with the king, even Daniel must have quaked. However, his words were clear and confident. They contained within them a faith that takes God seriously and will not allow him to be excluded from public life. He states the dream which is, in visual form, an outline of “things to come” (v 29).

Was it the dream that stimulated the image? Did Nebuchadnezzar want to take control of his destiny? Perhaps he wanted to assert that he was no one’s puppet, not even God’s! The scene was set for one of the most remarkable acts of compelled submission. It would set the standard for future totalitarian states.

“Never show your weakness” is an unwritten rule among those who aspire to have control over others. This chapter is extraordinarily self-revealing. It begins with a confession of faith, different in tone from the responses previously dragged out of the king in earlier chapters.

Ethan focuses on God’s faithful love to David and his people. His vision is of God’s eternal covenant with his Church finally established through the Messiah, Jesus Christ (vv 1,2).

What deep confidence we can experience, knowing this God of love and faithfulness.

Marriage is a sacred thing, created by God. However, the natural physical urge to become one with your spouse, although created as good by God, has been bent and perverted into an inextinguishable lust in many of us. Wisdom reminds us not to be led astray by the allures of others and betray our vows to our husband or wife and God.