Pride

Today as I sat down in the stillness of the beautiful morning I continued my journey through the Book of Daniel. We all know the children s stories about Daniel and the lions den and Shadrack Meshack and Abendigo but we sometimes forget about what happens in-between those stories and what lessons we can learn from them. Today I was reading about what happened right before the lions den about the mysterious hand that appears before King Belshazzar and proceeds to wright on the wall. Here is the account of that incident.

Daniel 5:5-6 and Daniel 5:25-28

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 knees knocked together and his legs gave way.......(Daniel was called upon to interpret the writing and this is what he said.) ²² "But you his son, ^{d]" [d]} O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. ²³Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. ²⁴ Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.

"This is the inscription that was written:

Mene , Mene , Tekel , Parsin ^[e]

²⁶ "This is what these words mean:
Mene ^[f] : God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

²⁷ Tekel ^[g] : You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

²⁸ Peres ^[h] : Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians."

While I was reading this passage I was thinking about how frighting it would be to watch a hand appear from no where and start writing on the wall. I am thinking that the King's hart was immediate convicted of his wrong doing. Today we do not see these kind of acts from God to convict our hearts rather the Holy spirit works in us that we might repent and receive the forgiveness of grace. How often do we brush off the nudging of the Holy Spirit as he tries to convict our hearts of our pridefulnes. I also thought about how hardened the heart of King Belshazzar was that he had drifted so far away from the lessons his father had learned about when he through Shadrack Meshack and Abendigo into the furnace. Just as King Belshazzar let pride drive a wedge between him and God we also tend to forget to give all glory to God. As parents do we set that example of verbally giving glory to God when something good happens or are we quick to take the credit onto our selves. You can see the prideful in our children early in their lives when they call to us saying "look at me look at me or see what I did." I would like to encourage each of you to make that a teachable moment sharing statements like "That was very nice, It is awesome that God gave you the strength to do that." or Offering a quick prayer with you child to thank God for the gift of talent that the child has been given. You can also develop simple statements that the child can respond to when people are giving the praise for example, "Thank you but I could not have done it with out my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." or "All Glory Praise and Honor I give to the Lord". If you practice these kind of statements it will become easier for your child to do away with pride and turn to humbleness giving a witness along the way.

Now O sing to the Lord, Oh sing God a New Song!