Daniel and the Lions

Daniel was the sort of person who did the same good things every day, whether anyone was looking or not.

Every morning he opened his window, and knelt down, and said thank you for the day.

That's it. That was his whole habit. Nothing dramatic.

But Daniel was also very good at his job, and he worked in a king's palace, and some of the other men there did not like that one bit.

They watched him. They looked for something to complain about.

And here is the funny thing, {child_name} — they couldn't find a single one.

So they went to the king and said, in the smooth voices people use when they're up to something: “Your Majesty, what a marvellous idea it would be if nobody was allowed to pray to anyone but you. Just for a month.”

And the king, who liked being flattered rather too much, said, “What a good idea,” and signed it.

And then he went to bed feeling clever, and woke up feeling sick — because he had just realised what he'd done to his very best friend.

Daniel heard about the new rule.

And do you know what he did?

He went home. He opened his window, the way he always did. And he knelt down and said thank you for the day.

Not to be difficult. Not to make a point.

Just because that was who he was, and he wasn't going to stop being himself because some men in a palace had made a silly rule.

So they took him to the lions.

Now I want you to imagine this properly, because everybody gets it wrong.

It was warm down there. There was a shaft of moonlight coming through the top, silver on the stone.

And the lions — the big golden lions with their enormous manes — padded over to look at this quiet man who had come to sit with them.

And they sat down.

One of them yawned. One of them lay across Daniel's feet like an enormous heavy cat and went rrrrrrr, which is lion for I like you, stay.

And Daniel leaned back against the warm stone with a lion's head on his knee, and slept better than the king did that night.

Because up in the palace, the king didn't sleep at all. He paced. He worried. He was at the mouth of that den before the sun was properly up, shouting Daniel's name.

And a voice came up out of the dark, perfectly calm, and possibly a bit sleepy:

“Good morning! I'm quite all right, thank you.”

And Daniel came up into the sunrise with lion hairs all over his robe.