Apocryphal Scripture of the Week: (see Doctrine and Covenants 91)
This one’s pretty fun and awesome, but it requires a bit of context first, so bear with me:
In “The Story of Bel and the Dragon,” we see a sort of alternate version (or maybe additional tale?) of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. The Persian King Cyrus, who with the Babylonians worships idols, commands Daniel to worship statues.
Daniel, however, instead challenges Bel’s priests to a very “Elijah vs. priests of Baal”-like contest. I won’t go into too much detail, but basically Daniel proves that their heretical god Bel is not actually eating the offerings presented to it; instead, the priests are sneaking in at night and eating the offerings themselves.
Then, just to rub it in, Daniel asks for the king’s permission to destroy a dragon idol that is supposedly invincible. The disbelieving king grants it, and Daniel uses a creative application of “pitch, fat, and hair” to destroy the Babylonians’ “living god…without sword or stick.”
The priests are ticked, so they manipulate the king into throwing Daniel into the lion’s den like in the canonical story. But this version, instead of explaining how Daniel survives with the lions, explains how God fed him through another contemporary prophet, Habakkuk:
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“Now the prophet Habakkuk was in Judea, and he had cooked a stew and crumbled bread into a bowl…when the angel of the Lord said to Habakkuk,
“‘Carry the dinner that you have to Babylon, to Daniel, in the lions’ den.’
“And Habakkuk said, ‘Sir, I have never seen Babylon, and I do not know the den.’
“Then the angel of the Lord took hold of the crown of his head, and lifted him up by his hair and with the speed of the wind set him down in Babylon, right over the den.
“And Habakkuk shouted, ‘Daniel! Daniel! Take the dinner which God has sent you!'”
(The Story of Bel and the Dragon, 1:33-37)
***
Can you imagine? God asks you to do something, then you offer some kind of weak excuse because it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable, and in response he sends an angel to literally lift you up by the hair and poof your excuses away!
I’m suggesting here that when we get a prompting to do something that doesn’t make sense to us, or that we’re uncomfortable with, we don’t make excuses for not acting on it. Instead, let’s respond as the Book of Mormon prophet Nephi did when he was asked to do something hard: commit to “go and do” and then ask God for help to solve whatever logistical problems stand in our way.
To repent; to forgive; to fulfill our callings; to reach people who seem unreachable; or even just to put our lives in order–our employment, our families, our relationships–this is the pattern we should follow.
The Commonplace Notebook 