Deciding not to alert him of my mistake, I turned instead to see what had made the dreadful noise. It was easy enough to discover. The king had dropped his goblet. Another servant was already running over to amend the situation, but his efforts to restore the vessel to its master's hand were rejected by a loud hiccup and a drooling laugh. The king shoved the goblet away, and the servant's robe received a splash of purple nearly matching the one I had just given my guest. "Ahaha, not that one!" the king gurgled. "Leave it on the floor! I've got—hiccup—a better idea! Bring out the gold, the silver—all those fine goblets my dear ol' father stole from that blasted temple in Jerusalem! Ha! A toast to the fallen gods of Israel, let us say." He motioned carelessly to the servant still holding his old goblet. "Go, find them for me, will you? Bring 'em out, and we'll all have a toast!"
The servant hurried away. He was followed by four or five other servants who understood that the chore wasn't nearly something that could be handled with one set of hands. Not long after, they returned with the requested drinkware, and my ears received uncountable echoes of the first abhorrent clang as the king's thousand guests celebrated this new opportunity by throwing their own goblets onto the floor. Laughter and uproarious exclamations followed, each man trying to bend his drunken brain to yield some sort of eloquent monologue of support for the king's decision.
Trying my best to ignore the commotion—and to dodge the flying chalices—I focused my attention on gathering the old goblets and mopping up the puddles of wine that were most in the way of my fellow servants' frantic efforts to ensure the guests' new goblets were kept full through their series of toasts.
The king, now standing on his throne with two gold chalices raised in his hands (and wine tipping out of both of them), began a ceremonious soliloquy in salute of a long line of gods: gods of silver, gods of gold, gods of iron, gods of stone, gods of wood, gods of bronze...and some other suite of deities whose names were garbled in his slobbering speech.
Then suddenly his monologue was abruptly stopped—mid-word, I think (if the syllables he was saying at the time were actually going to become words at all). I looked up from my diligent wine-puddle mopping to see what had silenced him, and my heart froze. He looked as though he had seen a ghost. His whole body was stiff, unmoving. The blood had drained from his face, and even the drool that had been running down his cheeks seemed to halt in its tracks. His eyes were bulging out of his fat face, the lids growing wider and wider as he stared at something on the wall to my left.
I turned slowly to see what had summoned his terrified attention, and my own eyes widened in horror as I saw—on the wall right next to the lamp stand—a hand. A human hand, I mean—a hand unattached to any visible body—just a hand by itself, writing on the wall. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. I hadn't so much as tasted a drop of the alcohol I had been serving, but part of me wished I had, if only to give myself an excuse for the vision I was witnessing. But the hand remained, and it wrote a message on the plaster of the wall that was as illegible to my eyes as my king's jumbled speech had been unintelligible to my ears moments before.
The hand vanished when its message was complete, but the writing remained. I turned my gaze back to the king. He was still standing, frozen, on his throne. His body was shaking now, and the drool on his lips had been wiped away. A glance at the rest of the room showed me that all the others had seen it too. All were silent, still, gripped by terror.
Then suddenly the king spoke up again, clearly this time: "The enchanters! Call them. Call them now. Get the astrologers and diviners—all the wise men of Babylon. I want all of them here now."¹ His gaze never left the writing on the wall as he spoke, but three servants dashed out of the room to fulfill his wish as the king muttered on, "Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom."
The servants returned in record time with all the wise men they could find. Trembling with fear, these respected folk gathered around the writing on the wall, their eyes wide and their faces tense. After a few moments, I could hear them whispering, and soon they had to tell the bewildered king: Not one of them had the slightest clue what the writing said.
At this, the king sank into his throne. His whole body was shaking miserably, and his face became even whiter with worry. The thousand nobles around him were of no more help than the wise men. They stared at the wall, blinking in helplessness. The whole room was baffled.
Then, suddenly, a flash of bright movement caught my eye near the door where the wise men had just entered. If my eyes could have widened more than they already were, they certainly did. It was the queen. Her beauty on a normal day was striking, but in this terror-stricken scene, she seemed other-worldly. Her jet black hair and graceful manner sparked a strange hope in my soul even before her steady voice broke the silence of the room.
"O king, live forever!" she said. The king's gaze darted her way, and she strode up to him with poise, not flinching as the attention of the room shifted from the ghostly writing to her regal face. "Don't be alarmed!" she continued. "Don't look so pale! There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. King Nebuchadnezzar your father—your father the king, I say—appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners. This man Daniel, whom the king called Belteshazzar, was found to have a keen mind and knowledge and understanding, and also the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve difficult problems. Call for Daniel, and he will tell you what the writing means."
The king sat up. "Daniel? Yes—um, call for Daniel. You!"—he pointed at me—"Go and find this man."
Leaving my wine-soaked towels on the floor where I had been kneeling, I stumbled to my feet and darted out of the room. Daniel was not hard to find; his quarters were nearby, and he was there. To be honest, he half looked as if he had been expecting me. I had not looked very deeply into his face before, but in my desperation for an answer in this puzzling state of affairs, I found myself searching his features intently as I related to him the matter for which he was being called. His dark eyes were gentle; his face was worn and webbed with soft wrinkles which betrayed that his usual expression was a peaceful smile, though he certainly was not smiling now. No, now there was instead a grim resolve. His eyes reddened with tears, and his jaw set, but he did not cry. He merely placed a steady hand on my shoulder and quietly nodded, "Let us go."
I returned to the banquet hall to find the king attempting an air of nobility that, on any other occasion, would have looked perfectly comical. He had straightened his robes and given both of his gold goblets to a servant to hold. He was seated, half-reasonably, on his throne, but the peculiar tilt of his head and the white-knuckled grip of his hand on his scepter betrayed that he was still quite drunk and had not in the least gathered his wits.
Daniel entered the room gravely. He looked at the wall briefly, seeming unsurprised but not delighted at the writing he saw there. His gaze then settled on the king as he awaited the latter's permission to speak. His solemnity and submission to the king's authority—even his authority in that drunken state—struck me. How is it that an old Jewish exile—let alone an old Jewish exile who's spent years among ambitious magicians and conniving astrologers, serving under the whims of king after king—could look unrattled, noble, and even sane as he stood in the middle of a room in which the king's wisest wise men were huddled and unnerved in a corner, the king's most regarded friends were slobbering and hiccuping in wide-eyed and drunken terror, and the king himself was frumpishly seated on his throne, feigning the appearance of sobriety while drool began to trickle down his chin once again?
Yet there Daniel stood in perfect calm, awaiting the king. The king did not make him wait long. He sat up and leaned forward anxiously. "Are you Daniel?" he asked. "One of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah?" Daniel did not respond, but the king continued: "I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you and that you have insight, intelligence and outstanding wisdom. The wise men and enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and tell me what it means, but they could not explain it. Now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom."
Daniel met the king's gaze and answered, "You may keep your gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king and tell him what it means.
"O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor. His high position made nations dread him and men fear him. He killed whomever he wished to be killed, spared whomever he deemed worth sparing. He promoted whomever he liked, humbled whomever he hated. But he was riddled with arrogance, hardened with pride. And don't you remember? He lost his throne because of this; his glory dissipated. He was driven away from people and given an animal's mind. His home was with the beasts, his body was soaked with dew, he went absolutely mad—and all this until he acknowledged that the Most High God is King. All this until he recognized that the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets over them anyone He wishes.
"But you, Belshazzar his son—you knew all this, you surely remember it well. But you're walking the same line. You have not humbled yourself either. You've set yourself against the Lord of heaven. Those goblets you had brought in—those were from His temple. And you knew this. Yet you drank freely from them, and your nobles and wives and concubines all drank from them too. You used them to toast a long list of gods who are not gods, mere 'names' who neither see nor comprehend. But when it came to the Living God, the One who holds your life in His hands? You have not honored Him.
"Therefore, He sent the hand and had written this inscription: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin.
"Here is what it means, O king:
Mene: God has numbered your days. Your reign is at its end.As Daniel finished his interpretation, the king's face was unchanged. The blood that had drained from it at the hand's appearance kept its distance still. His whole countenance was pale, expressionless. He made no reply to Daniel's words, yet he kept his promise and commanded that Daniel be clothed in purple, that a gold chain be placed around his neck, and that he be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.
Tekel: You've been weighed on His scale. You're wanting.
Parsin: Your kingdom is divided. It is given to the Medes and the Persians."
I was dismissed from the room at that point. We all were—I mean the servants, anyways. Apparently the wine spills could be cleaned up later. I don't know what happened in the room after we left, and I don't know what became of any of the drunken nobles or the drunken king for the rest of the day. But that night, Daniel's words came true. That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain. And that very night, we got a new king: Darius the Mede. The writing on the wall, in all its shock and all its splendor, rang true.
*****
In the face of crisis, it seems that there are always some whose mouths stay open, whose minds are clear, and whose actions are direct and weighty, as if they saw the storm coming and know exactly how to walk through it. I am grateful for those leaders, grateful for their willingness to step up and lean in, laying their own uncertainty and fear aside in their effort to make sure the rest of us—the stragglers—make it up the mountain, whether they know what's at the summit or not. They simply know we've got to keep going, and they give all they've got to get us there.
I'm grateful for them for many reasons. One of the biggest: A lot of times, I'm not that kind of leader. I want to be, of course. But that desire proves flimsy in the face of some waves. In the face of this wave—this crisis into which our nation and our world have been plunged the last few months as we wrestle between our fears of virus and death and our wild agonies at the thought of isolation and time—in the face of this wave, I have not been that kind of leader. I've felt more like one of those "splat" balls that you can win with arcade tickets or purchase at a kiosk in a mall—you know, the ones that fly with boundless energy into the air before colliding with a wall in an epic "splat" (hence the name) and stay there in all their sticky glory until gravity gradually peels them off the wall and sends them diving to the floor. This crisis froze me. I hit walls I never expected to exist and found myself flattened against them, stuck in goo while the rest of the world shifted and adapted and kept moving forward as best it could.
But the good news? I feel like I've finally peeled off the wall and made it to the floor—yes, admittedly, for another disgraceful "splat." But on the floor at last, I feel as though I'm rising again to my feet, and my tongue found words at last to ask the Lord, "What are you doing? What are you saying to your people?"
He gave me, in response, a verse and a story. The story you have read. The verse follows:
"...[I]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." —II Chronicles 7:14 (NIV, 1984)He gave this promise to Solomon long, long ago as He repeated the reality of His covenant with the people of Israel in response to Solomon's prayer of dedication for the temple he had built.
Our nation doesn't have that sort of covenant, but the principle, I think, stands as steadfastly as we could hope. Finding words at last to respond and to lead in the midst of this crisis, this is what is on my heart:
Belshazzar realized too late that every breath he had been given was a chance to honor the God who held his life in His hands. He ignored the knocks on his door until the writing on the wall declared his time was up. But we're still breathing.
Whatever this crisis is, whatever this time means, the fact that we're still alive means we've still got a chance. By God's grace, we've still got a chance to lay off our toasts to gods who are not gods. We've still got a chance to acknowledge that it really doesn't do for us to trample on the things that the Living God has called sacred. We've still got a chance to open the door, to heed the knock. We've still got a chance to ask with every breath, "Lord, how might I honor you today?"
I don't know where you're at right now in the flood of fears and dreams and confusing tensions. Maybe you feel like a "splat" ball too, or maybe you're the leader who still has words in your mouth that you're hanging onto as if your life depended on it.
Wherever you are, may the Lord touch you there. May He grant you the grace to look into His eyes, to set at His feet the load you've been carrying and the gods you've been toasting. May He set at rest your wild wishes to see the future and anchor you in the present, teaching your heart in each minute to keep asking, "Lord, how can I honor you now?"
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¹From this point forward, the quotations of the characters in the story are either copied or paraphrased from Daniel 5, NIV (1984).
¹From this point forward, the quotations of the characters in the story are either copied or paraphrased from Daniel 5, NIV (1984).
