I’m a history buff and enjoy the “people stories” behind the facts. It’s easy to look at historical figures as simply people in a book or faces looking back at us from sculptures, portraits, or photographs and forget that these were real people, just like us. None of them knew how things were going to turn out. They lived with the same uncertainty that we do. Even those who had faith in God rarely knew exactly how He would handle things and had to take each day as it came to them.
In “The Fellowship of the Ring” Frodo had reluctantly accepted the perilous task of destroying the One Ring of Power rather than allow it to return to the evil Sauron.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Historical figures were real people like us who didn’t ask for the situations they encountered, but they decided how they would respond to them. That’s what prompted me to explore what might it have been like to walk in the prophet Daniel’s shoes 2,500 years ago in my book “My Name is Daniel.
This week I was thinking about another person in history and what things might have been like for him (or them). I just finished doing the homework for it, and I’m ready to start writing. I’ll reveal more about it as things progress. Keep on the lookout!