You Have Not Measured Up

This is the message that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. . . . Tekel means “weighed” —you have been weighed on the balances and have not measured up. Daniel 5:25, 27

THE BOOK OF DANIEL begins by telling us that Nebuchadnezzar took “the sacred objects from the Temple of God” and “placed them in the treasure-house of his god” in Babylon (1:2). In Daniel 5:2, we read that many years later, King Belshazzar was hosting a great feast and “gave orders to bring in the gold and silver cups that his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem” so that he and his friends could drink from these exotic artifacts to toast their gods.

But then the real owner of these Temple cups brought the party to a deathly silence. A human hand appeared and began to write words on the wall that no one understood: Mene, mene, tekel, and Parsin. The king’s legs gave way beneath him out of fear. After being summoned to tell the king what the writing meant, Daniel said: “You have proudly defied the Lord of heaven and have had these cups from his Temple brought before you. You and your nobles and your wives and concubines have been drinking wine from them while praising gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone —gods that neither see nor hear nor know anything at all. But you have not honored the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny!” (Daniel 5:23).

Daniel explained that the words on the wall meant that God had numbered the days of Belshazzar’s reign, the he had been weighed on God’s scales of justice and did not measure up. His kingdom would be divided.

King Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the wall: He had been “weighed in the balances and found wanting” (5:27, ESV), and the days of his kingdom were numbered. We also deserve to have “weighed and found wanting,” “a failed kingdom,” and “days are numbered” inscribed on the walls of our lives. Instead, all of us who are joined to Christ have written across our lives: “made worthy by the worth of Christ,” “coheir of an eternal kingdom,” and “numbered among those whose lives will matter forever.”

Lord, we can never measure up to all we should be as parents, and ________ can never measure up to your holy standard. We need the grace made possible by the only one who has measured up. Write your story of grace over ________’s life.