So [Daniel] turned [his] attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.

— Daneil 9:3

8 Therefore this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Because you have not obeyed My words,

9 behold, I will summon all the families of the north, declares the LORD, and I will send for My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, whom I will bring against this land, against its residents, and against all the surrounding nations. So I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and contempt, an everlasting desolation.

— Jeremiah 25:8-9

14 Now since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil,

15 free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

— Hebrews 2:14-15

Thoughts on Today’s Reading

Grace, mercy and salvation from Christ to you.

We see in Daniel 9:3 that Daniel exhibited the shame of the people of Judah and Jerusalem before his righteous God by wearing sackcloth and covered in ashes. The Israelites had disregarded God’s gracious blessing and forfeited their God-centered unity. They found themselves scattered like dust in the wind from the land God had given them. Similar to the Prodigal Son in the Lord Jesus’s parable, God’s exiled people had nowhere else to go but to God Himself.

The exiled Israel people reflected the sin-corrupted heart of humanity that has existed since the Fall in the garden of Eden. No one – kings, princes, ancestors, or contemporaries – is exempt from the disaster of a life lived apart from God. Only God can provide the way out from a life mired in sin and death. That escape comes only through faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, because He is the One who, by participating human flesh and blood, in His death He might destroy the devil who holds the power of death and free us the sinners held in slavery by our fear of death.