Oh, He Boasted A Little

Therefore, O king, let my advice be acceptable to you; break off your sins by being righteous, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity. Daniel 4:27

Oh, the splendor of Babylon! Travelling to the great city from my distant home in a village no one will remember, I had thought long on the stagnation that seemed to affect the empire these past six years. As if some time limit had been breached at the coming of the new year, sudden thoughts came into my head of how the empire could be fixed. Leaderless it seemed and without direction under that Jewish adviser, Daniel. And his removal was but one of the ideas I would present to the king, Nebuchadnezzar, greatest of all living monarchs, may he live forever!

Insisting upon an audience with the king himself, such was the greatness of my thoughts and ideas in my estimation, I passed by a field where a man was chained. This man was as a beast to me, filthy with mud and dew, covered in the grass that he grazed upon. He grunted at me like an animal of the bush. Why did they keep such a specimen of insanity near the palace? A man approached me, surely the guide to the king I had demanded of the council, I thought.

"I see that you are one of the Hebrew servants. Guide me to the great king, as you value your life," I said with some pride.

"You have an audience with the king even now," the man said, "Tell him your ideas for the running of his empire."

"You're not the king," I exclaimed, "How dare you!"

"No, this man is King Nebuchadnezzar," the man said, indicating the beast chained to a tree stump. I was, needless to say, at a loss for what to do with my august ideas and plans.

"I am Daniel," the man said to me, "Let me tell you what led to the king's humiliation..."

And the rest of the story will be familiar to those of us who have boasted of our great ideas and plans without checking in with our Lord first.

Trust in the Lord and plan with Him!

Bucky