For Such a Time

In the fifth century BC, in the winter palace at Susa, a Jewish girl who has concealed her nationality is queen of Persia, and her cousin has just sent word through a servant that the empire has signed an order to kill her people.

Esther is worth meeting as a person rather than as a lesson. She is an orphan. She was taken into the harem, not recruited; the text says gathered. She has not seen the king in thirty days, and the law says anyone who approaches him uninvited dies unless he extends the sceptre. She has every reason to believe the palace is the safest place in the empire for her, and Mordecai's first sentence takes that away: think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house.

Then he does something that people miss because they only remember the famous half. He removes her from the centre of the story before he asks her to act. Deliverance will arise from another place. She is not the rescue. The Jews will be delivered whether or not she opens her mouth; what is at stake is whether she is standing there when it happens or whether she and her father's house are destroyed while she waits. Only then, and only as a question, comes who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this. Not a declaration of destiny. A question, from a man who cannot see the outcome either. God is never named in the book of Esther. He does not need to be; the question does the work.

Her answer is not confidence. It is if I perish, I perish.

You were in the room when it was said, and you have been justifying the silence since with how little your voice would have changed. It probably would have changed very little. Say it this week anyway, to the person who needs to hear it. You are not the rescue. You are the one who happens to be standing there.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 85 is Their Faith (Mark 2:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna