Lions’ Dens are usually not happy places.
In general it’s a good idea to avoid them.
Spiritually, however, they are inevitable or we avoid them at our risk.
If we are practicing our beliefs or applying our ethics sooner or later we are going to face Lions.
Maybe this photo of a lion’s den can buck us up.

Notice how the photo is taken from behind the kids and looking out.
I like how they have each other in the den.

I’ve been reading a novel about someone who lived daily life in a den.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian forced out of the comfort and embrace of family, friends and academia and was led to take a dangerous stand against Hitler.  He was executed as a traitor by his country shortly before the end of World War II.

In Bonhoeffer’s Life Together his translator says that Bonhoeffer’s definition of the world is “the sphere of concrete responsibility given to us by and in Jesus Christ.”
This, too, can reorient our thinking about dens.

I sense now that dens are callings—if we are spiritually healthy and not beating up on ourselves or being door mats.  God is saying, sister, this is your sphere where you’ll find me, your ultimate sustainer.  (Then God probably adds, “Get going.”)

Perhaps real misery in life is not living among hungry lions.
It’s living with a call-neglected soul.

Embrace the Den—that’s our arena where true strength arises.
That’s where we discover our source, the one who created and continues to create us.  We become a little bit more of who we are created to be.

Inhabit your call, whatever it is.
It is the secret den of happy this side of heaven.

Pastor Sarah Dickinson

References:
Photo by Sue Barrett, 12/9/12 worship service – featuring Daniel 6
Denise Giardina, Saints and Villains (fascinating novel on Bonhoeffer)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, translator John W. Doberstein