Like Daniel
THE LORD PRESERVES THE FAITHFUL.
Bible Reading of the Day: Read Psalm 31:21-24.
Verse of the Day: “The Lord preserves the faithful, but the proud he pays back in full” (Psalm 31:23, NlV).
“How do you remember to pray every day?” Kara asked her friend Bonnly.
Bonnly blinked at Kara as though he had not understood the question. Bonnly and his family had left Cambodia, his native country, only a few years earlier, but he already spoke English very well. “How do I remember to pray every day?” he repeated.
“Yeah,” Kara said. “Like, most days I forget. You know, I either have homework, or there’s a really good TV show on, or one of my friends comes over, and I forget to pray. I don’t mean to, though. But you told me you pray every day.”
Bonnly still wore a confused look. “Yes. I do not forget to pray,” he explained, “because praying is very important to my family.”
“Well,” Kara said, looking a little embarrassed, “praying is important to me, too.”
“I will explain like this,” Bonnly said. “When I was tiny child, my family had to leave our house in Cambodia because the soldiers did not like my parents. They did not like us to pray and told us that if we didn’t stop, they would take our house away.”
Kara listened, her eyes wide with fascination. She knew her friend had come from far away, but she didn’t know that his family had been driven from their home.
“But my father said we would never stop praying. He tried to tell the soldiers to become Christians, but they would not listen.”
“Wow,” Kara said. “Just like Daniel! Did they throw you in a den of lions?”
Bonnly smiled shyly. “No,” he said. “But we had to leave our house to escape the soldiers.”
“Were they going to kill you?” Kara said, her face suddenly serious.
Bonnly shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. But I remember the refugee camp where we lived before we came to this country.”
“So,” Kara said, her voice filled with awe, “you lost your house and everything because you wouldn’t stop praying?”
“No,” Bonnly said, smiling. “Father says we escaped to this country because we wouldn’t stop praying. He says God answered our prayers much—” he stopped as if he couldn’t think of the next word- “much greater than we thought.”
Bonnly smiled again. “We pray every day still,” he said.
Kara returned her friend’s smile. She didn’t say it, but she couldn’t help thinking, I want to be more faithful in prayer too-like Bonnly and his family.
TO DISCUSS: How did God reward Bonnly and his family’s faithfulness? Are you faithful in prayer? Do you sometimes forget to pray? Do you, like Kara, want to be more faithful about praying to God every day? If so, how can you do that?
TO PRAY: “Lord, thank you for preserving the faithful.”