"The handwriting's on the wall"

     I've heard this expression used at times, usually as a euphemism for impending gloom and disaster that should be clear and obvious.   Sometimes it is expressed "your days are numbered", or "you have been measured and found wanting".  Usually the one who is involved does not see it coming, but has to have someone else point it out to them.

     We heard this in the reading from Daniel today at liturgy.  King Belshazzar had desecrated the sacred vessels taken by his father from the temple in Jerusalem by using them in a drunken feast where they praised the gods of gold and silver and bronze, iron, wood and stone.  At the banquet, fingers wrote these words on the wall - Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin - which Daniel interpreted as "God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end ... you have been weighed on the scales and been found wanting ...your kingdom will be divided".  Needless to say, Belshazzar was not a happy camper, and the messenger became the scapegoat.

     It is interesting that sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees, sometimes that which is before our eyes escapes us, we can't see the "handwriting on the wall".  Even the learned and savvy don't see or comprehend.  It takes an outsider, a prophet to interpret the truth before us.  Yet how often do we look for or welcome the prophet?  How often to we ridicule or demean or persecute the messenger whose message we find irritating?

     In so many ways our world and our society has the handwriting on the wall set before us.  We face challenges that are tremendous, that threaten the very fabric of who we are and what we want to be, yet we ignore the message, we ignore the prophet, we continue to feast our way into oblivion.  It is like wearing blinders.  We have tunnel vision.

     On this eve of Thanksgiving, when our attention should be drawn to that above rather than to ourselves, let us seek answers that will save, and not just satisfy.  Let us look to the prophets among us, and remember not to kill the messenger.  Again, with much to be thankful for, much still needs to be understood and embraced.