Esther: For Such A Time As This

It is good for us to remember this when life gets boring or mundane or we feel trapped in our circumstances.

Esther may have spent long days in the palace wondering why she ever followed Mordecai’s advice and entered that dumb beauty pageant.

But God had a plan.

Likewise, you may think you made a wrong decision—you married the wrong person, or took the wrong job, or bought the wrong house. Maybe you did, but it is the right one now, because God knew of your choice before the foundation of the world and factored it into his plan for you.

Hosea could have spent long hours beating himself up over his marriage choice—but God had a plan, and he redeemed Hosea’s situation for his purposes.

Stop second guessing God. You are not a mistake. You may have made some bad choices, but God has factored them in—he still loves you and wants to make the best of your life.

God has a plan.

Seek him, ask his counsel, look for his blessing and presence, pray, and God will show you the way forward. Then, of course, obey.

Routine faithfulness to our responsibilities honors God

From the time of Queen Vasti’s removal from her position in the palace until the crowning of Hadassa as Queen Esther, four years had passed (cf. 1:3 and 2:16). Four long years, and for one whole year of this time Esther did nothing but go to the spa every day for her beauty treatment. (I know to a woman that might sound like heaven, but for me that would be …).

Then from the time of Esther’s crowning as Queen until the evil Haman hatches his plot to launch a pogram against the Jews, another five years pass (cf. 2:16 and 3:7). Five long years filled with endless days of routine activity in the palace.

Esther spent five years waiting for the “such a time as this” for which God had placed her in the palace. So it often goes.

• Moses spent 40 years in an Egyptian court and 40 more obscure years in the deserts of Midian before God called him to confront Pharaoh and deliver the people of Israel.

• King David spent long years and dark days on the run from King Saul before God placed him on the throne over Israel.

• John the Baptist sent long years in the desert before God called him to his ministry of being the forerunner of the Messiah.

• Paul spent three years in the Arabian desert doing, we do not know what, before he went up to Jerusalem to get the church leaders’ blessing to launch a ministry. And when that did not work out so well, he spent another 10 years back home in Tarsus before the church was ready for the ministry God had called him for.

• Even Jesus was 30 years old before he began his public ministry. His life prior to that was so routine and mundane that subsequent generations had to make up stories about what he did during those years, just because we mere humans could not imagine that his life would have been normal. (These stories are written in the Infancy Narratives that comprise part of the pseudopigrapha of the New Testament.)

The point here is simply to say that God is pleased with routine faithfulness and obedience to the tasks of life that lie within our areas of responsibilities.