Do you ever get those annoying holiday newsletters from people who seem to live insanely successful lives? They are thriving professionally, their kids are winning all kinds of awards and they can’t wait to see what the new year will bring. Daniel chapter four kind of begins that way. But then things real.

So we’re in Daniel chapter 3 in this installment of the new series, Even If. It’s not really all that relevant, to be honest. It’s about an emotionally unstable leader who makes rash decisions and unreasonable demands. And a statue that some find offensive. And three guys who refuse to honor a symbol of national pride when the band starts playing the music. Oh. Wait. That sounds pretty relevant.

The most powerful man in the world has had a dream that keeps him up at night. If you can’t tell him what it means, he’s going to execute you. Here’s the hard part – to be sure you aren’t just telling him what he wants to hear, he orders you to first tell him what he dreamed. Sound like an impossible mission? It was. Except for one thing.

Remember that scene in the first Star Wars movie (episode IV, A New Hope) where Obi-Wan Kenobi lets Darth Vader win? Or when Loki permits himself to be captured by Iron Man and Captain America in The Avengers? Something like that happens in the book of Daniel. Except it’s God who willingly embraces defeat. Makes you wonder what He’s trying to teach us.

When the worst happens we begin to ask hard questions. Why is this happening? Does God care? Is he punishing me? Is he angry? There's a great story in the Bible that helps us with some answers.

In I John 4, we are instructed that loving one another is of most importance as it shows God living in us. God loved us and so we ought to love one another.

Compare them to a low-enough standard and you can make the Hell’s Angels look like the Little Sisters of the Poor. The thing is, we are not called to be better or more righteous or more moral than some human standard. We are called to be like God. And He is not just holy – He is holy, holy, holy!

In 1995, singer Joan Osborne hit the charts with the song, One of Us. The lyrics ask a haunting question: What if God was one of us? The sentiment is actually much older than that. Jesus himself suggested that very possibility.

You are home, minding your own business when you hear a noise in the garage. You investigate. You catch a neighborhood kid stealing something you value. How are you going to respond? You’ve got three options: justice, mercy or grace. Which do you choose? Before you answer, let’s talk about how God responded when we were caught red-handed.

Jesus once said that it’s harder for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Forget all the clever explanations you may have heard that attempt to drop the degree of difficulty in that saying. Jesus meant a real camel and real needle. Funny thing is, a few verses later Jesus encounters a rich guy who doesn’t just enter the Kingdom – he sticks the landing!