How much do you weigh?
Unless you are a health practitioner or even a fitness instructor, any other person asking this question may get a response such as this:
It is not polite to ask someone how much they weigh!
But, forgive me this one time…
Allow me to take you into one of my favorite books in the bible. The book of Daniel. Daniel, chapter 5, speaks of the last king of Babylon (King Belshazzar) who was having a feast and decided after drinking lots of wine to give the order that his servants bring to the banquet all of the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. (Daniel 5:1-2)
WARNING: Alcohol impairs judgment. Careful how much you imbibe! Like King Belshazzar, you are open to making very bad decisions that can result in grave consequences.
The idea of giving the order to have servants leave your home to go to the temple and gather all of the drinking cups out of the temple so your guests can drink out of them!!! Seriously… why??? I guess he didn’t think his own cups were special enough..
But I digress… let’s get back to the story.
The Lord, as we can absolutely appreciate was not impressed with the King’s action. And so he wrote on the wall while all were at the banquet ( P.S. I would have loved to have been a fly on that wall just seeing the faces of the King and his guests!)
“5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. 6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking…
25 “This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin
26 “Here is what these words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
27 Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
28 Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”” (Daniel 5:5-6, 25-28)
Harsh! I can’t imagine the utter disappointment and pain I would be in if my good Lord looked at me and said: “You have been weighed and found wanting”.
So let’s go back to our weight question: How much do you weigh?
Food for thought: When you take in to account all of your deeds and actions for the kingdom, how much would you weigh on God’s scale? It is a brand new year… New Beginnings. Let all that we do bring God glory and praise.
Prayer: God of mercy. God of grace. Creator and God most high! Praise, glory, and honor be to your Holy Name. Thank you for the wisdom of your words. May you open our ears to hear, our eyes to see, and hearts and minds to understand and do your will. May we learn from the life of Daniel and be people who are courageous to stand up to what is right and Godly, people of integrity, holiness, and righteousness. To God be the glory. To God be the glory. Amen.
May God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you.