By David Faust
Handwriting on a wall sounds messy—like graffiti that’s hard to remove. Years ago, one of my kids took a permanent marker and drew some creative artwork on our living room wall. It took two coats of paint to cover up the mess.
Teachers write on chalkboards and whiteboards, and business leaders project their notes on screens or walls. But if you “see the handwriting on the wall,” it’s a warning that something difficult, dangerous, or unpleasant will happen soon.
This expression comes from Daniel 5, where an unusual and unexpected handwritten message interrupted the drinking party King Belshazzar threw for a thousand of his nobles. Eerily, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster wall of the palace. None of the king’s advisors could decipher the writing, but Daniel interpreted the four cryptic words (MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN—“numbered, numbered, weighed, divided”) to mean Belshazzar’s days were numbered. God had weighed the king on the scales of justice and found him wanting, so the Babylonian kingdom would be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.
Daniel’s interpretation swiftly proved true. “That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom” (Daniel 5:30-31).
The handwriting on the wall brought to light two crucial errors that ruined Belshazzar’s life. He thumbed his nose at God, and he ignored the fact of his approaching death.
Taking God Lightly
When King Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem years earlier, he took articles from the Lord’s temple (2 Chronicles 36:7), and Belshazzar treated those holy items like party favors. He and his guests showed brazen disregard for God as they drank from the silver and gold goblets taken from the temple and “praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone” (Daniel 5:4).
Love for God includes treating him with reverence and awe. Solomon wrote, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul wrote (Philippians 2:12), and Peter said to live “in reverent fear” (1 Peter 1:17). Reverence is never irrelevant, but irreverence is the spirit of our age. If you want to do something countercultural, respect the Lord’s name, the Lord’s day, the Lord’s table, and the Lord’s church. Don’t take God lightly.
Being Unprepared for Death
Apparently, Belshazzar assumed he had many more years to live. He surely would not have shown such blatant disrespect toward God if he knew he would die that very night. He overestimated his lifespan and underestimated his mortality.
Jesus told a story about a rich man who made the same miscalculation. The fellow accumulated lots of cash, enlarged his real estate holdings, and planned a comfortable retirement, telling himself, “‘Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you’” (Luke 12:19-20).
We don’t know when we will die. Our lives are like “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14), so shouldn’t we prepare to meet our Maker? “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23), so shouldn’t that gift stay atop our priorities?
Let’s not repeat Belshazzar’s tragic mistakes.
Personal Challenge: Is your life characterized by “reverent fear” for the heavenly Father (1 Peter 1:17)? How can you harmonize biblical passages about fearing God with other verses that talk about loving God?
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David Faust’s new book, Not Too Old: Turning Your Later Years into Greater Years, was released April 10. It is available from College Press and Amazon. To read an article/excerpt from Not Too Old, click here.
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