Day 27: God's Fingers

The Prompt: Describe the fear in Daniel 5:5 when God's fingers appeared and wrote on the wall.

Can you imagine seeing a hand- not a whole hand, mind you, a part of one- being suspended in midair and moving?  Since this was God's fingers, I picture this to be a pretty big hand.  I suspect a few people looked at their wine glasses and reconsidered taking that fifth drink.  Maybe others were too drunk to care.  Most people though, were probably filled with pure fear.  The kind that clutches your heart and constricts your lungs.  The kind that makes your heart beat so fast you can feel the blood pulsing in your body.  The kind that churns your stomach.  Verse 6 reads that, "The king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other."  He was scared!  If King Belshazzar had been like me, he probably thought the fingers were going to turn on him and strangle him. And what about after the fingers?  Would other body parts appear and harm him?  Would bewitched objects start to move around the room?  Would ghosts from his defeated enemies appear for revenge?  Would a fire suddenly rage?

I'm sure prayers were uttered to their gods, and people started second-guessing the choices they had made in life.  What heinous crimes had they done that had angered the gods?  He and his guests probably wanted to run, but their feet were planted into the floor.  The floating partial hand was mesmerizing, and I'm sure they were curious to know what it was going to write.  It probably disturbed them even more when they couldn't even understand the message the fingers were delivering.