Faithfulness is a Prior Decision

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. (Daniel 1:8)

The story of Daniel behind with this act: he resolves beforehand not to “defile” himself with the king’s food. The king’s food was defiled because it was custom for the food to have been “blessed” by the king’s gods prior to him eating it. That simply means that the food was sacrificed and/or ritualized to idols. In Jewish custom that was unacceptable. Daniel decides before he had to make a choice that it would be his voice to abstain. How many times have we fallen short and made mistake because we didn’t choose beforehand what we were going to do? I mean just think about the time we had spent sitting in front of a choice when it hits us and we make a mistake because we were pressured and used our “good” judgment in the thick of things. Imagine if we had just made a decision prior to facing that bad (read “hard”) choice. Several implications to this idea, the most important of which is this: when Daniel resolved himself with what he will do, there was no chance of slipping up and doing what he never intended to do. If we would simply choose the outcome before hand, we wouldn’t ever find ourselves in a situation that compromises the very fabric of who we are with a potentially bad result. We would consistently have the result we intended because there would be no other option– we took it off the table. Just imagine preparing work documents, essays, tests, etc ahead of time– all those unintended results would not be an option. I can say the same about relationships: if you resolve yourself to what is and what is not appropriate; rather if you resolve yourself to what/where you will and will not do or be, your relationships would not fall to ruin by unintended decisions or shortcomings. I can continue this for every aspect of life. It is really important that we learn from Daniel this simple lesson: faithfulness is a decision we make prior to actually being confronted with a situation which calls us to be faithful.