So I’m super jazzed about today’s reading! It's from the book of Daniel and covers a prophetic dream about the rise and falls of all of the kingdoms between Daniel and the birth of Jesus.
I studied Daniel in depth about 10 years ago and then again less than a year ago, so I am familiar with the dream and I know the story pretty well. All the scholars I've read are super interested in the dream and the story because it's demonstrates prophetic accuracy. That's cool but prophecy has never really been my jam. Too much of a skeptic I guess.
What DOES fascinate me today is the contrast between the materials that make up the kingdoms of this world (gold, silver, bronze, iron) and Gods kingdom (a mountain).
Get this, in the dream all of the human kingdoms represented by minerals you mine, refine and forge. Minerals generally excavated from a mountain. God’s kingdom, in contrast, is whole, complete, unrefined.
And what has me joyous and slack jawed is this... isn’t this what we see?? Gods ideas mined, refined and forged into monolithic religions and institutions! God created beauty, we get the fashion industry. God created order, we get institutions filled with rules and regulations and red tape. God created sensuality, we get porn and the sex trade. All of these ideas separated from their source, mined and refined by human hands, fashioned as we see fit. Each human process taking the beautiful further and further from the source material; making things harder, shallower and brittle.
But Jesus, represented as a rock that becomes a mountain, is whole and complete. He introduces a kingdom not mined, refined and forged but naturally comprehensive and complete. All minerals collecting and acting as one. Including those we’ve idolized and those we’ve ignored, edited out or devalued.
Isn’t the Bible SO COOL!
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