A Story Older Than Babylon

I used to think the story of Daniel in the lions’ den was a children’s tale—flannelgraph heroes, cartoon lions, happy ending. Then I grew up and discovered the lions have grown up too. They have new names now: anxiety, pornography, rage, cancer, divorce papers, a child who no longer speaks your name, a culture that laughs at prayer. The den is real. The stone over the mouth of the pit is heavy. And the decree, signed by a thousand invisible kings, still cannot be revoked.

But the Church, in her ancient wisdom, keeps putting this reading in front of us right when we need it most. And every time she does, she is telling us the oldest and truest story humanity has ever been told.

Joseph Campbell spent his life mapping it. Hollywood makes billions retelling it. Jesus lived it perfectly. It has a name: the Hero’s Journey. And right now, whether you asked for it or not, you are on it.

Stage 1: The World Out of Balance

Every adventure begins with a wound in reality.

In Babylon it was an idolatrous decree: “For thirty days, no one may pray to any god or human except the king.” The ego had crowned itself God.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of Jerusalem surrounded by armies, the holy city trampled, cosmic powers shaken. The sacred center collapses.

Sound familiar?

Our world signs the same decree every day: “Thou shalt not pray. Thou shalt not be still. Thou shalt scroll, produce, perform, numb, repeat.”

We feel the armies at the gates. We hear the lions pacing.

Stage 2: The Belly of the Whale

Then comes the moment every hero dreads: the night-sea journey, the descent into the place where human power ends.

A stone is rolled over the mouth of the pit. Darkness. Silence. The smell of wild beasts.

Modern neuroscience has a clinical name for it: the moment the amygdala hijacks the brain and the prefrontal cortex—the part that plans, hopes, prays—goes offline. Fight, flight, freeze. The lions roar.

And yet Daniel prays. Three times a day, even in the den.

Contemplative prayer, researchers now tell us, does something wild: it thickens the very prefrontal regions that fear tries to shut down. Faith literally rewires courage into the brain.

Stage 3: The Supernatural Aid

In the deepest dark, a Presence arrives.

“My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ jaws.”

The same angel who will calm a storm on Galilee.

The same Presence who will breathe on trembling apostles: “Peace be with you.”

Grace does not always remove the trial. Grace enters it. The lions are still there. But they fast today.

Stage 4: The Return with the Boon

Morning comes. The stone is still sealed, yet Daniel walks out without a scratch.

King Darius—pagan, powerful, sleepless with anguish—writes to every nation under heaven:

“The God of Daniel is the living God… He saves and rescues… Let all tremble and fear before Him.”

The hero never returns for applause. The hero returns carrying a gift the world is dying for: living proof that something is stronger than death.

The Gospel’s Astonishing Twist

Re-read Luke 21 with this story in your bones and you will never hear it the same way again.

Jesus is not predicting doom for doom’s sake. He is describing the identical pattern:

• Armies at the gates
• Cosmic distress, people “dying of fear”
• And then: “They will see the Son of Man coming… When these things begin to take place, stand erect and lift up your heads, because your liberation is drawing near.”

Stand erect.

That is not a survival tip. That is resurrection posture.

Your Den, Your Angel, Your Witness

You are in the den right now.

The lions have your scent. The stone is heavy.

But the same God who sent His angel to a Jewish exile in Babylon has not changed His strategy.

So here is the only spiritual formation plan that has ever worked:

Tonight, set a timer for three minutes.

Get on your knees (or sit if the body protests).

Name the lions out loud. Speak the fear.

Then pray one Our Father slower than you have ever prayed it in your life.

Feel the amygdala roar. Keep praying anyway.

That is the precise moment the angel shuts the lions’ mouths.

Do it tomorrow. And the next day. Thirty days if necessary.

Because the spiritual life is not a technique to feel better.

It is a death and resurrection that rewires your brain, reorders your desires, and turns you into a walking sign that the God of Daniel still “saves, sets free, and works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.”

When the culture collapses, when the diagnosis comes, when the child walks away, when the sun and moon go dark—do not cower.

Stand erect. Lift up your head.

The world is waiting for someone who has come out of the den unharmed to tell them the terrifying, glorious truth:

There is a living God.

And He is stronger than the lions.

Your liberation is drawing near.

And through you, someone else’s just might be too.

Developed with assistance from Grok AI