“If ye be privy to the lives of kings, then ye know,” the king would often say to his three children, “that the hardest part of being king is keeping that very life about you, and the second part is keeping the kingdom. So it is,” he continued one day, “that the laws of this kingship have never been much for mere genealogy and birth order, if the wisdom of another can be shown greater than the one to inherit by birth.”
So it was he gathered his two sons and daughter to him and explained that, to firmly establish his successor, he had prepared for them a test of their wisdom, and the test was simply this: that each would make for himself a crown to wear before their father on the day appointed. “The test,” said the king, “is in both the making and in the wearing, so be wise about all I have told you, and all you may hear.”
The king then appointed loud cryers to stand outside the chambers of each child, and to cry out for a full day and a full night, over and over again, “The one who divides, the one who is wise will withstand.” After that, the king appointed craftsmen to execute the designs of each, and appointed the day of their testing.
When the day came, the king stood, fidgety, but resolute in his conviction that the test he had devised was, ultimately, the best for the kingdom. “Far better for them to die at my hand, than lose both life and kingdom to a usurper,” he thought to himself. So it was, when the eldest son came crowned before him, that the father's face showed a sad kind of smugness. For the crown the son had on was gorgeous, but of far too light a metal for the king's purposes. “You never really understood, did you?” he sighed. Then as the boy knelt before him, the king withdrew his sword, touched both the boy's shoulders as if beknighting him, then brought the sword's edge down hard, right down the middle. Both crown and head split wide open, and the eldest son fell down dead before him. “Take this worthless fellow out of here,” the king shouted to his attendants, “for he obviously never had the wisdom to hold onto life and kingship.”
The daughter came next, after the servants had quickly hidden her brother's blood beneath a carpet. The king winced painfully when he saw her head covering, for it was properly no crown at all, but rather a turban-like affair, woven of very fine and wonderful cloth to be sure, but with only the daintiest lace of golden filigree around the edges. “Did you not hear the words of the cryers? Have you never listened to my own voice?” the king cried out to her. “How sad that you, who I expected more of, obviously do not have the wisdom to understand the dangers of being queen!” And he brought the edge of the sword crashing down upon the fine turban almost before the quizzical look of surprise could fully form across her face.
“I almost dread to see what foolishness this last son has crafted,” cried the king as the servants carried the girl's body out, “but I suppose, for the sake of justice, he must undergo the same test as the others.” When the youngest boy was brought before him, however, the king smiled, for the major feature of the crown upon this son's head was a stout ring of fine gold, encircled above his head like a halo. “I knew the test wouldn't fail completely, that at least one of my children would have the wisdom to pass!” the king quietly mused. He again performed the ritual of seeming to knight the son with a tap of the sword's blade on each shoulder, then suddenly brought the edge down hard on top of the surprised son's crown. Alas, though, gold is a metal known for its beauty, and not its strength. The golden ring, though stout in appearance, was far too soft to withstand the weight of the falling sword. The blade sliced through and continued a fatal distance into the boy's skull with a most sickening thud.
The king reeled back in shock, seeming to suddenly come to the full realization of what he had done. He retreated quickly to his bedchambers and proclaimed that the whole kingdom must mourn the occasion that none of his heirs had proved wise enough to succeed him on the throne. He himself most woefully mourned his great loss, while at the same time trying to justify his actions to himself, “because they never would have made it as king or queen anyway -- not one of them!” And he finally fell into a fitful sleep of exhaustion, far into the late reaches of the nighttime.
Not long afterward, however, an Angel of the God of Heaven awakended him as it appeared suddenly in his room. The Angel spoke to him, “You've done wickedly, O King, trying the children beyond their wisdom.” The Angel then continued, “Because of this, you yourself must pass your own test, with no further instruction than that you yourself gave: 'The one who divides, the one who is wise will withstand.'” The king's first inclination was to fly into a rage and repeat to the Angel, who was now vanishing away, his self-justification. But something in his heart stopped him, and stopped the excuses, and brought him first to his knees, then face-down on the floor. And there, in the darkness of his soul, he knew his wrongness, and found that the God of Heaven was there as He had always been, quietly but inexorably, unceasingly, crying out wisdom to him, and there, before Almighty God, the king found repentance, and finally, sleep and peace.
The morning came too soon, though, and with a shout. For the news of the king's treatment of his children had spread like wildfire throughout the kingdom, and a distant cousin had quickly seized the greater part of the kingdom, with the people following in open rebellion to the king. As the shouts of the newsbearers awakened and informed him, the king remained prostrate, bowed down upon the floor. It was all he could do to think quietly, “and the second part is keeping the kingdom.” And then, though he no longer felt the close presence of the very God of Heaven, he prayed, “O God, how wicked I am, and how gracious You are, to leave me my life, though my kingdom be gone. For I can at least live without a kingdom, but my children can't live with the halves of their heads cut in two. O Lord, I know now, that it was the children who were the strength of my own crown, and I would that I could die in their places. I ask Your forgiveness, Lord, for the trial I put them through was really the trial of my own way of thinking, and it's me who isn't wise enough to make it as king or as anything else upon this earth.” And he wept bitterly, this time in true mourning for his children, and for the evil he had brought upon them.
The Angel walked into the throne room before God, and reported quietly, “He passed, didn't he, Father? Repentance is always the test that divides man's wisdom from Your own, isn't it?” The Father smiled, “Yes, and see to it that My Spirit carries that message to the heart of this king.”
And they say that in that kingdom a miracle then occurred, such as only the God of Heaven and Earth can perform, for God awoke the three children from death and healed the wounds of their heads. The joyful servants threw off the grave clothes they had been prepared for burial in, dressed them in the finest robes of the king's closets, and presented them before their father the king, well and whole. The king hugged each of them a long, long time just to feel the life coursing through each body, and they, over time, forgave him, for God Himself had explained to them that was the condition of their release from the grave. The king gave up all claim to the kingship to his cousin and retired to the countryside, although the elder son would eventually assume the throne under circumstances which could only be acknowledged as the hand of God. As his last official act, the king proclaimed that the day of his children's restoration would be a perpetual annual feast, and he proclaimed that each year this song would be sung:
- “You belong to Me,” says the Lord,
“You belong to Me,” says the Lord,
“The expectations of a man will only send you to a grave,
You're getting only half the story knowing Jesus Christ can save
- you from your sin and wicked ways,
Judge your own thinking, man, know that My thoughts are not your own,
Judge by the grace of Jesus Christ alone,
You belong to Me.”
It was sometime in the late 1980's, in a place called America. A prophet walked into a church. He surveyed the congregation, drinking in their spirit, sized up the pastor, and thought to himself, “Let's spend some time here and see if these people are spiritual enough to pass the test I have for them.” A young father sat with has wife and two children in the congregation and looked back at the prophet. He thought he heard the Lord singing a song to him, in the Spirit. It started, “You belong to Me.”
“The King's Test”
Copyright 1991, 2003 Jeffrey Brent Clifton
(First draft Sept. 1991)
Author's Home Page//www.jbcmusic.com//
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