The Hand That Wrote on the Wall

There was a king named Belshazzar, and one night he threw the loudest party you ever heard.

His city was strong. Its walls were high and thick. Belshazzar felt safe behind them, safe and proud, so proud he did a daring thing. He sent for the golden cups from God's holy temple, the cups that were never meant for ordinary hands. And he and his friends drank from them and laughed, and they lifted those cups to their little gods of gold and stone, gods that could not see or hear or love them.

Then the music stopped.

There, on the bright plaster wall, a hand appeared. Just a hand, with no arm and no body, writing slowly in the lamplight. Writing words.

The king's face went white. His knees knocked together. The proud, laughing man went small and afraid, the way you feel when you have done something wrong and the door opens and you are caught.

Nobody could read the writing. The wise men came and squinted and shook their heads. So they sent for an old servant of God named Daniel, a man who had loved God his whole long life.

Daniel looked at the wall. But first he looked at the king. "Do you remember King Nebuchadnezzar," he said, "who grew so proud that God let him eat grass like the cattle, until he looked up and learned that Heaven rules? You knew all of that. And still you lifted God's own cups to gods of gold and stone."

Then Daniel read the writing, calm and sure.

"God has counted your days," he said. "God has set you on the scales. And you have been weighed, and found wanting."

Weighed, and found wanting. It means: put on the scale, and not enough. Too light. Lacking the very thing you needed most.

Oh, child. That is a cold fear, the fear that someone will measure the true weight of you and find you are not enough. Belshazzar felt it that night. Deep down, so do we.

If any of us, the proudest king or the smallest child, were set on God's scale all alone, we would be too light. Every one of us. There is no wall high enough, no party loud enough, to hide it. On our own, we are found wanting.

That night the walls Belshazzar trusted were already being crept past in the dark, and by morning he was gone.

But keep your eyes on that scale a moment longer. God did not look at the wanting world and turn away. He could not bear to. He loved his children far too much to leave them too light forever.

So one day Someone would come and step onto the scale himself. He would not be found wanting. He was full, full of everything good, brimming with it. And he would lean his whole weight down on our side, on purpose, for us. He would weigh in where we fell short, until the scale that read not enough swung all the way over to enough, and held there, and never tipped back.

The king read his ending on the wall, and that very night his kingdom passed to another.

But Daniel walked out of that palace still loved and still kept, an old man God was not finished with. He would serve the new king too. And soon that new king would learn just how well God can guard one faithful man, even in a den full of hungry lions.