life, the Holy Spirit can then show you how to live new stories in your own life and in your relationships with family, friends, church, and the entire world.
How do you do this?
I recommend using the stories as a starting point. Once you’ve read a particular story, read the scriptures and start your discussion of the thought questions. I hope you will think of many more questions. Add those to your discussion.
Here are some questions or ideas to use after every story:
1 Invite the Holy Spirit to be in your story.
2 Have you ever been in a situation like the one presented in the story?
3 If you were ______ (name a character in the story) what would you have done?
4 Have you ever experienced anything similar in real life?
5 How might you rewrite the story to make things come out better than they did in the original?
6 Think about the story of the next (day, week, month, year) of your life or of the experience of your church or community. How might you make what you’ve learned part of that story?
7 Can you think of further fictional stories to start the process again?
8 Don’t worry if you can’t turn the result into a sort of systematic theology. Just join in the big story of God’s world.
Don’t worry if you can’t turn the result into a sort of systematic theology. Just join in the big story of God’s world.
Daniel and the
Forgotten Prince
Daniel 6 and 13 (Susanna, in the Apocrypha)
The moment Daniel had understood that he was called to serve his God by serving Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, he had known that there would be some difficult moments. Now here he stood as Belteshazzar, one of the king’s favorites, and he was being called upon to make a judgment. It was an unusual set of circumstances that had put him in this position, because there would normally be judges assigned to such a task. But the village that served the exiles here was under the king’s control, and the captain of the guards had asked him to intervene. His instructions were to intervene when a case might cause trouble, and this one could certainly do that.
On the one hand was a young man, no more than in his early twenties, and perhaps as young as his late teens, an exile from Judah. On the other an almost equally pitiful farmer, who was bowing low to the ground before the great noble lord. Belteshazzar wondered how they would feel if they realized that he also was an exile from Judah. But that didn’t matter any more. He was now an official of the king, and easily the highest ranked person within a day’s ride of this place. Even the officers of his guard outranked everyone present.
The young man was also bowing to the ground, but it was not out of respect. He’d been thrown there, and a soldier was holding his neck down with the haft of his spear. Before the guard had pushed him there, Belteshazaar had seen his look of angry defiance mixed with despair. The young man was certain that he was about to die, and he was trying to do so with some pride.
“Rise!” he ordered.
“Who brings charges against this man?”
“I do, my lord.” It was the farmer.
“Proceed.”
“My lord, I am Nabu-etir, and I had in my possession a silver goblet, precious, a gift from a soldier I served as a manservant. The goblet was stolen from my house, and was found in the possession of that man.” He pointed to the young man.
“What is your proof of ownership?”
“I have here the grant made to me by my master, whose life I saved.” He passed to a guard a clay tablet, who passed it on to Belteshazzar. Belteshazzar examined it carefully, and read the writing on the outside. It was a fairly standard tablet for such a purpose, clearly wrapped a second time with clay with a copy inscribed on the outer shell, thus guaranteeing against forgery. The outer shell could be broken and the text inside read and compared. As Belteshazzar read, however, he noticed something odd. There were a number of errors in writing on the tablet, as well as several signs which were unusual. It looked just a bit like a student exercise, in which one might spell out the syllables of a word or a god’s name when a single sign might normally be used.
“This soldier,” he said, reading the text, “WARDU-ILANI, granted you this cup as a reward for saving his life. Yet you live the life of a poor tenant farmer.”
“My lord, I am a simple man of the soil. Yet the object is precious to me.”
Belteshazzar addressed the guard. “Where is this cup?” A soldier came forward and handed it to him.
“What is the inscription on here?”
“A dedication to some barbaric god, my lord.” Belteshazzar read the simple inscription in Hebrew: “LYTM BN YHYKM.” Odd that. No such son of Jehoiakim (YHYKM) was known, but it was not impossible that there had been one, lost in the confusion. It was also possible that another YHYKM than the obvious one was meant Of course nobody here realized that he would be able to read the inscription on the cup.
“So you do not know anything about this cup, other than that it was a gift?”
“My lord, it was part of the spoils of Canaan, but beyond that I know nothing. I faithfully served my lord Wardu-ilani, and he rewarded me.”
“He gave you a cup, and he provided you with a document of transfer so that your claim could not be questioned.”
“Indeed it cannot, my lord. The claim and the description are clear.”
Well, it might well be clear, assuming this “Wardu-ilani” knew nothing of what he had taken from the spoils, and the scribe who had written the deed was only marginally literate, and assuming that Wardu-ilani actually existed. The name was not impossible, but was a touch generic for Belteshazzar’s taste, considering the man himself was not there to verify. “Servant of the gods” indeed! There was something else about that tablet that bothered him, but he wasn’t sure what. It would come to him in a moment.
“What is your name?” he said to the younger man.
“I am Yotham, son of Jehoiakim, a prince of Judah,” he answered, straightening his body. The translator for the soldiers assigned to guard this village proceeded to translate, stumbling and slow. Nonetheless, even though he understood both Babylonian and Hebrew better than the interpreter apparently did, Belteshazzar preferred to keep his history out of the picture. None of these people seemed to realize it, and he had no plans to enlighten them.
“And this goblet is yours?”
“Yes, my lord, it is mine. I brought it with me, the sole heirloom of my house, when I was brought her to Babylon in the exile of Zedekiah. I hid it and preserved it. It is mine!”
“Yet you have no document indicating your ownership.” Belteshazzar could see the triumphant smile on Nabu-etir’s face. Clearly he thought he had won his case. One had a document, one did not. Simple!
“I have
