Who's really pulling the strings?

In a normal year, today would have been the first day of our annual Holiday Club. Obviously, this is not a normal year, and therefore we have not been able to prepare and deliver a normal Holiday Club. But we have been able to produce a virtual Holiday Club. This is a mix of daily YouTube videos and Activity Packs that were delivered in advance. We launched the first video today and have had a great response. It has been good seeing the children send in their photos and videos.

There is lots that I enjoy about Holiday Club - including the fifteen minutes where the team get together before the children arrive to reflect briefly on the passage/story for the day and pray together.

This year we're looking at the story of Daniel, and today the focus was on the captivity and Daniel's training from Daniel 1.

For Daniel, his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, and for many others this would have been a traumatic experience. No doubt they saw people brutally killed during the attack on Jerusalem and throughout the cruel march to Babylon. The Temple was ransacked and much of the city detroyed. For most people, these events were evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's god was bigger and stronger than the God of Israel.

And yet the author of the book of Daniel wants us to see things differently. Whilst it might look as if things were out of God's control - three times in this chapter we see a different perspective. 

It was God who handed Judah into Nebuchadnezzar's hands (verse 2). It was God who caused hardened Babylonian officials to show favour to Daniel (verse 9). And it was God who was the source of Daniel's learning and wisdom (verse 17).

Daniel knew that he could trust God because ultimately God was in control.

However bleak things might look for us today - God is ultimately in control - and therefore we can trust him.