A Song Rising from the Smoke

On the morning of June 17, 2015, a Bible study group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, welcomed a stranger into their circle. That stranger took nine lives. The shooting shattered a congregation and stunned a nation.

Yet what happened three days later at the bond hearing stopped the world. One by one, family members of the victims stood before the man who had murdered their loved ones — and they blessed God. Nadine Collier, whose mother Ethel Lance was killed, said through tears, "I forgive you. You took something very precious from me... but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul." Felicia Sanders, who had watched her son die, spoke of the God she still trusted. They did not curse the furnace they had been thrown into. They praised the One who stood with them inside it.

Daniel 3:52-55 captures Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego doing something that defies human logic — blessing the name of the Almighty while flames roar around them. "Blessed are You, O Lord... praiseworthy and exalted above all forever." Not after the rescue. Not once the danger passed. From inside the fire itself.

The deepest worship is not the praise we offer from comfort but the blessing that rises from the furnace — when everything in us wants to scream, and instead, we sing. That is where the Most High meets us, standing as a fourth figure in the flames.