Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 181 · June 30
The Book Of Records
“On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king.”
Somewhere in the palace a lamp goes on at the wrong hour, and a clerk is woken to read government minutes aloud.
On that night could not the king sleep. The book of Esther never once names God, across ten chapters, and it does not name a cause for the insomnia either. What it does is put things in an order and let you look at it.
What gets read out is old business. Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s chamberlains who meant to lay hand on the king, written down years earlier and forgotten. The king asks the obvious question. What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this? The servants answer: There is nothing done for him. An unpaid debt on the books, surfacing at three in the morning.
Haman is in the outer court at that hour, waiting to request a hanging. Instead he is asked what should be done for the man the king delights to honour, decides it is about himself, and makes a list. Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear. And the horse that the king rideth upon. And the crown royal which is set upon his head. Then the delivery: one of the king’s most noble princes to array the man, walk the horse through the street of the city, and proclaim before him.
Look at the list again for what it admits. No money in it. No office, no land, no command. Every item is a borrowed piece of the king, and every one is about being seen wearing it. Then he is handed his own list, sent to fetch Mordecai, and made the noble prince walking in front of the horse shouting the words he wrote.
Set out in items the last thing you wanted badly enough to picture in detail, the way Haman set his out. The list is the confession, and nobody else has to read it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 181 is Hold Fast Without Wavering (Hebrews 10:23).