If you happen to fly Korean Air in the near future, you will be weighed.  While this protocol might sound a little personal, it is not intended to be offensive.  Korean Air Lines weighs passengers every five years to assess trends in the average weight of its customers, and if necessary, to reconfigure the load distribution on its airplanes. 

While I have no immediate plans to fly Korean Air, this practice creates a mental image of passengers stepping up on a carnival style scale where a giant needle reveals their weight to everyone in the terminal. The gate attendant is dressed in a ringmaster’s suit and guesses passenger’s weight before they step on the scale, then gives them a prize if he misses the number by more than twenty pounds!  Ok, maybe the process is more discrete than this.

You may not be aware that God has been in the weight guessing business for thousands of years. 
Actually, God doesn’t have to guess, because He weighs people based on his intimate knowledge of their thoughts and actions.  All people.

Consider the case of Belshazzar, a successor and grandson of Nebuchadnezzar in the ancient empire of Babylon.  Belshazzar ruled during the time of the exiled Jewish prophet Daniel, and he made the grave mistake of blaspheming God.  One night, as the Medes and Persians were breathing down his proverbial neck, Belshazzar held a feast with a thousand nobles, during which he worshipped the gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone (Daniel 5:4).  To make matters worse, he ordered the precious cups and other vessels Nebuchadnezzar had plundered from the temple in Jerusalem to be brought out and filled with wine for drinking. 

As the feast continued, a supernatural hand appeared and wrote four words on the wall: “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN”.  Belshazzar turned pale and called in his wise men and astrologers to see if they could tell him what the words meant.  They were stumped.  Then someone suggested that perhaps Daniel could unmask the mystery, for which the king would reward him handsomely.  When Daniel arrived, he refused compensation and quickly interpreted the inscription.  Daniel judged Belshazzar’s arrogance as he had set himself up against the God who held his life in His hands.  Then he provided these specifics:

“Here is what these words mean:

Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:26)

That very night Belshazzar was slain, the Medes and Persians took control of his city, and the Babylonian Empire as it had been known ceased to exist.  All because Belshazzar didn’t make the weight!

I can only assume God weighs us as well and occasionally finds us “wanting”.  What kinds of things are registered on His scale?  Possibly the following:

• He weighs our devotion to determine whether we are living for His glory or our own.
• He weighs our motives to expose us when we do the right things for the wrong reasons.
• He weighs our words when they are laced with bitterness and void of the grace He has poured into our lives in His Son Jesus.
• He weighs our work to reveal how we have used the potential He put in us when we were being formed in our mother’s womb. 

Many other weight measures could be added to this list, but hopefully, you can see how God’s scale works.  The good news is, when it comes to God’s scales, the more we weigh the better!  Of course, there are other passages in the Bible that warn us against carrying too much weight in the wrong areas.  The old King James Version of the Bible puts it this way in its translation of Hebrews 12:1, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”  

Like any good athlete, we want to shed the things that hold us down and nurture the things that make us stronger; stronger in the Lord, that is.  When we see the handwriting on the wall, it is time to act.  We want God to find us ready, and willing to do His will.

“So, step right up, ladies and gentlemen” and let God put your life on his scale.  It’s alright.  You don’t have to tell others what you find.  But they will see the change as you increase the image of Christ in you, and build the spiritual muscles God can use for His purposes.