Today’s Reading: Daniel 8:1-10:21
Sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the Lord’s goodness and how He can structure my steps in order to really wow me. This morning I drowsily got up to read today’s passages from Daniel and honestly, struggled through them. While I was impressed by the continuity of the message of the end times in all the visions within Daniel the thing that got me the most today was the ram. Last night before I went to bed I was reading Max Lucado’s Safe In the Shepherd’s Arms where he goes through the twenty-third Psalm phrase by phrase. I was reading the section on the phrase “He anoints my head with oil”. In this section Lucado explains how the shepherd uses oil on the sheep, one way is he anoints their noses to keep the flies from laying eggs in them, ew! Another way that the shepherd uses oil is on the sheep’s head, he will pour it over the rams’ heads during mating season. During this time the rams will butt heads with each other over a female. With oil on their heads it is more likely that the blows will simply glance off rather than cause injury to one another. So I went to bed thinking about rams fighting one another with oil poured over their heads. Only to wake up and read about Daniel’s vision of a ram where he describes the ram “charging westward, northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.” (8:4) Lord, what are You trying to tell me? I read the rest of the section, underlining many things and then returned to bed for a few minutes to snuggle up to my husband’s back while I prayed about what I had read. I just kept thinking about the ram, saying it over and over in my mind, “the ram, the ram, what does this mean for me Lord? Ram… ram…. ram” and slowly God started putting a picture into my mind, a picture I thought had nothing to do with the ram, I didn’t know.
The picture was of darkness, total and complete darkness. Then gradually it became a little lighter to where I could see where I was. Like Daniel in his vision defined precisely where he was in the vision, I knew precisely where I was standing in my vision. I was on highway 24 just outside of Remington Indiana almost to the intersection of interstate 65 looking to the north toward Chicago. I was standing just across from where there are a great many silver grain silos, if I were to guesstimate how many are there, I would say about ten, but I’ve never counted before. (We drive by that place often when visiting our parents in Newton county.) Next to the grain silos there is a little co-op building, an office of some sort, but I can’t remember exactly what it is. Just above the little building that looks like a house a storm began stirring in the dark air. It was small, very small, at first but began to grow and as it grew it moved further and further north toward Chicago. The larger the storm grew the more it swirled like a tornado, but this wasn’t a natural storm or a natural tornado, it was more fluid, more real somehow. It was a storm of LIGHT! It was as if tiny little droplets of light were swirling in the cloudy darkness creating a tornado of light in the pitch blackness over Chicago-land. The storm never touched the ground, it just swirled over the ground in the darkness, getting closer and closer to it until it almost touched but then began swirling backward – counterclockwise – until it was almost back up into the sky. Then the alarm went off and the vision was broken off by the buzzing of yet another day taking off.
To say the least I am perplexed at this vision and it’s darkness. Yet thrilled by the storm of light and the fact that it somehow has something to do with me, considering that I had just asked God “what does this mean for me Lord?” In writing this vision down I am amazed at many of the similarities between Daniel’s vision and my own! The exact location of our visions being known; in his vision the goat that came to oppose the sheep came from the west and never touched the ground, my tornado of light never touched the ground. Yet interestingly enough to me, it almost seems as though my vision is the opposite of Daniel’s in this aspect as well. A ram is a sheep, which would represent God’s faithful; while a goat is representative of an unfaithful people, (see Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats) the ram is the one in charge and until the goat comes and defeats him – unfaithful conquering the faithful. In my vision light is most definitely representative of God, and I am going to assume that because it was little drops of light – much like stars, some larger and brighter than others – that they represented God’s people (“we reflect God’s light” “we are to live like stars in the darkness”). And the darkness, of course would represent evil in general. Although the light never touched the ground, it most certainly was penetrating the darkness and bringing light to the world where it was – light/faithful conquering the darkness/unfaithful.
While I have sat on this vision all day, this is all the farther I have gotten in the interpretation, yet I am still thrilled by the end result. Light conquering the darkness by multiplying and bringing more droplets of glittering, star-like light to the darkness of this world, I’LL TAKE IT!!!!!
So what did God speak to you today through His word?
Tamar Knochel 