Daniel opens Jeremiah's scroll, does the math on the seventy years, and responds the way saints respond to promises: he prays them in. Sackcloth, fasting, and the great confession, we have sinned, we do not make requests because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.

Before the prayer ends, Gabriel arrives with the answer's timestamp: as soon as you began to pray, a word went out. Heaven moves at the first sentence.

Daniel teaches the strangest lesson in prayer today: the answer left heaven at his first sentence and took three weeks to arrive. Instant hearing, delayed delivery, unseen resistance in between. If you have been praying into apparent silence, the silence may be traffic, not refusal.

And notice what fueled twenty-one days of persistence: not self-assurance but mercy-assurance, we do not make requests because we are righteous. John gives the deepest ground of all: you are a lavished-on child of God now, with a family resemblance still developing. Children keep asking. Keep asking.