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On Sunday, the pastor at our church used Daniel 3 as his sermon text. A young, twenty-something black woman read the passage as Pastor Jim stood in the wings.

Her reading was remarkable. She confidently pronounced the ancient names and places. There was drama in her setup of the scene. With her pauses and flourishes she immersed me in a story I’ve heard dozens of times: Three exiled Hebrews refuse to bow before King Nebuchadnezzar’s monstrous idol. Infuriated, the most powerful man on earth pronounces their punishment will be death by fire.

He orders the execution furnace heated seven times hotter than normal—so hot the “valiant warriors” who bound the men and threw them into the furnace were incinerated doing their duty.

The king watches. He hears his soldiers screaming, sees their dying, smells their roasting flesh—and sits passively, reassuring himself that his pride is in place, his power asserted, reestablished.    

His big idol, ninety feet tall. His position. His power. His control. He could do whatever he wanted, obtain whatever he desired. Unmatched on the world’s stage. His scepter. His holdings. The soldiers, their grieving families, fatherless children. The Hebrew renegades.

Nothing to him, he decides. Yet, significant enough to make him mad.

The rebellion, the rebels, the insubordination; his soldiers, their fidelity to oath. Never mind.

This incident is handled. Nothing to see here. Only ash to be shoveled from the furnace. 

I was ambushed by the fourth man.

Her voice resonated with King Nebuchadnezzar’s astonishment. He stood to his feet and stared into his furnace slack-jawed:

“Didn’t we throw three men, bound hand and foot, into the fire?”

“That’s right, O king,” [his officials] said.

“But look!” he said. “I see four men, walking around freely in the fire, completely unharmed! And the fourth man looks like a son of the gods!”

Her reading transported me. I was present, hearing like the first time, anticipating the story’s next move.

I was ambushed by the fourth man in the fire. Hot tears boiled up from the furnace in my soul, scalding my eyes, then flowing like lava down my cheeks.

I’m not alone in my fiery ordeal.  

“This is God’s Word,” the young woman stated reverently; her reading concluded. As is customary, I whispered, “Thanks be to God.”

Pastor Jim approached his pulpit. But Scripture engulfed me. There, in my furnace. My soul is heated to an extreme temperature.

I am bound, exiled through censorship, made persona non grata. Because I dared to write a Christian perspective for society’s consideration, I am identified as an enemy of the State and declared a danger to democracy. My name is blacklisted by the most powerful people on earth.

Isolation. Electronic warfare. Tampering. Threat. Grievous weapons to unleash on the soul. I’m incarcerated in a digital gulag, exiled as surely as if shipped to Siberia.

I’m angry. Indignant! A violet-blue blaze burns behind my sternum. Unquenchable gall, boiling in my throat, a cauldron of words I mentally monitor lest the associated emotion escape my soul onto a page and be like acid.

I’m reassured in the midst of one of the more fiery experiences of my life.

With the young woman’s reading, I fell into my soul’s furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. “These three men,” and yours truly, “fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire still tied up.”

I don’t know about the other three, but tears flowed from this exile when I realized there was another man in the fire. I’m not alone in the flames.

Yes, yes of course. This is rudimentary theology. Christ is with us. We are with Him. Jesus is the fourth man in the fiery furnace. What part of this did I miss after all those years in Sunday School?

It’s a good question.

As I type the words to that query, I pause. I look out my window. I wonder. I ponder.

I’m back now…

It’s not that I missed Jesus or misunderstood the story. Rather, it’s the heat, “seven times” hotter.

I’m reassured that in the midst of one of the more fiery experiences of my life—a fire fueled with shame, and guilt, and doubt, and professional suffering, personal risk, financial compromise, and no small fire of fear—I’m not alone. Even in this…?

I paused again. To make certain.

Even in this fire, I am here to report the presence of the fourth man.

Nothing escapes fire, even our theology, without either being consumed or purified.

After I whispered my “Thanks be to God” at the end of the woman’s reading, I whispered two more prayers:

“Thank you, Jesus. I’m not alone.”

Acknowledging how hot my soul is, I whispered my second prayer: “I have nothing but my life to lose. Brother, unbind me! Let’s walk free in these flames!”

Thanks be to God.