“I Watched the Painter”

Inspired by Daniel 5:25–28
(MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN)

I watched the painter.

She did not speak at first.
She only dipped her brush into ash
not paint
and dragged it across the canvas like a wound.

The world kept spinning.
The empire feasted.
And she painted like she was remembering something
we had all tried to forget.

I felt it in my bones.
The ancient fire.
The holy unrest.

So I opened my mouth
and began to prophesy.

MENE, I said.

Look. Look at what she paints.

This is not art for your gallery.
This is indictment.
A countdown.
A holy clock ticking inside the soul of your nation.

You’ve danced on the backs of the broken
and still ask for applause.
You’ve made idols out of guns,
profits out of pain.

You thought God wasn’t watching.
But I have seen the hand.
It is here again, writing in flame.

Your days are numbered.

MENE, again.

Because you did not listen the first time.
Because you built more cages instead of opening more doors.
Because you silenced the prophets
and called it unity.
Because you criminalized the wounded
and decorated your walls with their scars.

The painter dips her brush in crimson now.
And I weep,
because the blood is not metaphor.

TEKEL.
You’ve been weighed.

Not on your terms
but on heaven’s scale.
And you are found wanting.

Your laws protect power,
but not children.
Your courts pardon privilege,
but punish the poor.

Your churches sing,
but will not shelter.

You say “In God We Trust”
while bulldozing the very image of God in your neighbor.

You have not just failed.
You have refused to become just.

PARSIN.
Now comes the crack.

She paints it with indigo lightning,
across the heart of the canvas.
Across the heart of the nation.

The kingdom will fall.
Not by war
but by rot.

The weight of injustice
will split it open from the inside.

The prophets warned you.
The streets cried out.
But you chose comfort over truth,
and now the fracture begins.

But listen—listen—before you turn away.

Because the painter is not finished.

She reaches now for gold.
Not the gold of kings,
but the gold of saints
the shine of the oppressed who still believe.

And I see it
a remnant.
A resurrection.
A rising color in the midst of collapse.

So to the empire, I say:
Repent.
Before the fire finishes its work.
Before your walls are all that remain of your name.

And to the weary, I say:
Hold on.
God has not forgotten.
The tomb is still empty.
And resurrection always begins
where the empire thinks it ends.

I watched the painter.
And I wept with hope.

Because even in judgment,
God is creating again.
And the world,
if it listens,
might still become
beautiful.

Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca+
www.ThoughtsPrayersAndArt.com