Daily Manna · Day 85 · March 26
For Such a Time
“For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
In the fifth century before Christ, in the Persian palace at Shushan, a young Jewish woman who had kept her family background hidden was now queen. Her cousin Mordecai had just sent her word through a servant. The empire had signed an order to kill her people.
Esther is worth meeting as a person, and not only as a lesson. She was an orphan, with "neither father nor mother." When the king's order went out, the young women "were gathered together unto Shushan," and Esther "was brought also unto the king’s house." She did not choose any of it. Now the king had not called for her in thirty days, and the law said that anyone who went to him without being called would die, unless he held out his golden sceptre. She had every reason to think the palace was the safest place in the empire for her. Mordecai's first words took that hope away: "Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews."
Then he says something people miss, because they remember only the famous last line. Before he asks her to act, he moves her out of the centre of the story. Deliverance will "arise to the Jews from another place." Esther is not the rescue. Her people will be saved whether she speaks or not. What is at stake is whether she will be standing in her place when it happens, or whether, as Mordecai warns, "thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed" while she stays silent. Only after that does the question come: "who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Mordecai asks it as a question, because he cannot see how it will end either. God is never named in the book of Esther, but the whole book shows Him at work, and the question carries that faith.
Esther did not answer with confidence. She asked her people to fast with her for three days, and then she said, "and if I perish, I perish."
Perhaps you were in the room when something needed to be said, and ever since, you have excused your silence by telling yourself your voice would have changed very little. It may well have changed very little. Speak this week anyway, to the person who needs to hear it. The rescue is in God's hands. He has placed you where you are standing, and you can be faithful there.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 85 is Their Faith (Mark 2:5).