This morning in Bible study we were in Daniel, and one word stopped me: ruach. In the Aramaic chapters it’s rûḥā, which means breath, wind and spirit all at once. Daniel is said to have “an excellent spirit” in him. Literally, a surpassing one.

Then I read what happened because of it.

“Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials… because an excellent spirit was in him” (Daniel 6:3). The very next verse, the other officials start looking for a way to bring him down. They find nothing. He’s faithful, and there’s no error or fault in him. So they say the quiet part out loud: we’ll never get him unless it has to do with the law of his God.

They didn’t go after his failures. They went after his faithfulness.

Something I’ve been sitting with this week came into focus here. Love is always the target of fear.

Scripture says perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). I’d always read that as good news, and it is. But it also means fear knows exactly what threatens it. When love shows up, fear doesn’t relax. It organizes. It looks for a way to make love illegal.

So opposition doesn’t always mean I’ve done something wrong. Sometimes it means love has walked into a room where fear was in charge.

What gets me is what Daniel does next. He knows the decree has been signed. He goes home, opens his windows toward Jerusalem, and prays three times a day, “as he had done previously” (6:10). He doesn’t put on a show of defiance or plot. He just keeps doing what he’d been doing.

And when the king comes to the den at dawn, Daniel’s first words to the man who put him there are “O king, live forever!” No bitterness. He blesses him.

I know my own pattern. When I meet opposition, I want to defend, explain, win. Fear meets fear, and both of us get a little more hardened in our ruach. That’s the phrase Daniel uses for Nebuchadnezzar’s pride (5:20).

Daniel shows me another way. Keep the windows open. Keep praying. Keep loving the person in front of me, even when they’re the one who signed the decree.

Fear will keep aiming at love. It always has. But it was the lions’ mouths that got shut.