Esther

Today’s Reading: Esther 4:1-8:17

Ok, I promise you that I did not plan this ahead of time, the cliff hanger in the story and all. But I know who did plan it and He is so awesome to have done it this way! Today we get to all the really great parts of the story of Esther! Here her people are, slated for complete and total annihilation and everyone powerless to stop the flow of events except Esther. And there’s her surrogate father to remind her of that very fact. Esther, who knows but that you have come to such royal position for such a time as this? I think in all of history there are few phrases that live in infamy as much as “Who knows?” and “for such a time as this”. Oh, how many times in my life have those phrases echoed through the caverns of my soul filling them with possibilities. “Who knows, maybe I have bigger plans for you than you thought I did…” “Who knows, maybe I really can be ‘that good’…” or “Maybe I placed you in this uncomfortable situation for such a time as this…”.

Life is filled with uncomfortable situations, it just is, we can hem and haw about where those situations come from and why they’re there until we’re blue in the face from running around in circles chasing our tails but in the end all that really matters is the fact that life gives us uncomfortable situations and it’s up to us as to how we’re going to deal with those situations. It’s all in how we think about them and see them. Take our pre-empted plans the other day, that was certainly an uncomfortable situation, or at least it would have been if I hadn’t been having so much fun! Honestly, I was so excited about the adventure and the prospect of what God was going to do with this situation that I hardly cared about that fact that we were stuck on the side of the road! I should probably add here that part of me knew that we weren’t going to make it all the way to our pre-determined destination, but my brain wasn’t in on that information.

After we had met six-month pregnant police officer Michelle and the two State troopers, the mechanic showed up followed directly by the tow-truck driver, Petie. Now Petie was a fun fellow, beautiful are the feet that bring good news and his feet were pretty beautiful! While they didn’t bring the news of being able to fix poor Tammy’s new-to-her car (she’s only had it a month) he was the one who was fully capable of taking us to the ones who could! And THAT was good news! So we three girls, minus Tammy’s daughter who was taken on to school by the red-headed Michelle, were aided into his tall tow truck cab with a gentlemanly hand. I sat in the middle next to Petie on a florescent yellow roadside assistance jacket covering a milk crate with my daughter on my lap, while Tammy sat in the bucket seat by the window. As the gentleman walked back around to his side of the cab after helping us ladies up Tammy and I quickly prayed that God would bless him and his vehicle and everyone that rode in it after us. When we were on the way to the “car farm” (the four-year-old’s name for a car dealership) Tammy asked Petie “is there anything that we can pray for you?” And that just opened up a whole new can of worms! It just so happens that Petie the gentleman is a Christian too! For the entire 20 minute ride we three adults swapped God stories and scriptures and that Petie, I tell ya, that man spoke with such conviction that I by the time I stepped back out of his truck, again aided by his arm, I felt like I had been in the presence of Jesus! God hadn’t just sent us any old tow truck driver, He’s sent us His son of light! For the rest of my life I will never forget Michelle or Petie, they were such tremendous “God sends” that day, little touches from heaven sent in the form of two beautiful children of light simply doing their jobs. But to Tammy and I they meant the world to us!

That is such a powerful message to me. The by simply doing our God-given jobs, police officer, tow truck driver, teacher, mail man, blogger, mom, we have the opportunity to become someone else’s angel right there on the side of the road. Michelle the police officer had an obligation to stop because she’s a police officer, but she did not have the obligation to stand there by the side of the road and talk to us and make friendly for an entire hour! She could have sat in her car the entire time and listened to the radio! But she didn’t. Petie didn’t have to help us up into the cab of his truck like a gentleman, he could have let us stumble in all on our own, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to carry on a twenty minute conversation about God with us while he was driving, he could have remain stone silent and we never would have known that we all are kin. And who knows, maybe they were having bad days too until we showed up on the scene! Honestly, it’s hard to be in a bad mood when Tammy and I are around, we’re filled with the oil of gladness most of the time and we’ll bring it out in you too when given the chance. But none of that would have ever happened if we all had simply kept our mouths shut. If we had focused on the problem instead of focusing on the solution that God was unfolding right before our eyes.

To me that’s what is so beautiful about the story of Esther. While God isn’t mentioned once in the entire story you can so plainly see His hand at work through the entire thing! So many times in the story you can see His perfect timing at work, from the first feast Esther throws for the king and Haman with the evening in between to allow both men to ponder on what it is that Queen Esther is wanting. The King so curious he can’t even sleep so he gets out “the book” and reads and remembers about Mordecai and realizing that he has forgotten to honor the man who saved his life…. WOAH!

He has forgotten to honor the Man who saved his life… If that isn’t a significant sentence I don’t know what is!

Have I forgotten to honor the Man who saved my life? Does my life honor Jesus? Does the way I go through my day honor His sacrifice?

That day, Michelle and Petie honored Jesus, they honored him before they ever told us that they were Christians. They honored Him before they ever said His name. They honored Him in their smiles, in their peace-filled demeanors, and in the fulfillment of their jobs. Sure they get paid to stop and help people in their time of need, but they don’t get a paycheck for being nice while they do it. And who knows that you weren’t put in your own position for none other than such a time as this…

Today’s Reading: Esther 1:1-3:15

I have to tell you that the story of Esther is by far one of my favorites. There are so many things that are significant within its pages, the complete absence of any reference to even the name of God, yet the tell tale signs of His Almighty presence in the salvation of His people. It’s just an amazing story. To me, the pinnacle moment within the story is when… oh no! We haven’t gotten there yet! I can’t ruin it for you! Sigh… OK, well, I guess I’ll just have to save that message for some other day.

I guess, instead, I’ll tell you a story that I’ve been holding onto. It’s a story about my prayer partner Tammy attempting to take me to this little café that she found downtown. They have a lot of outreaches there and she wants to take me there to meet the owner so that we might be able to make some connections between our ministries. So Tammy and I had made plans to drive down there together. I would put my son on the bus, jump into Tammy’s car with my daughter and then drop Tammy’s daughter off at school before heading over to the café. Well, it’s about an hour long drive downtown from where we live so we had some time in the car to talk and what not. During a brief lull in our conversation I checked my daily devotional app on my phone. I thought it was a good one and decided to share it with the car. I read about how God gives us double blessings for our troubles. Now, you know I tell the truth, so when I say I had just finished reading the devotional when “it” happened; you have to understand that I mean I had no more than said the last word in the devotional about double blessings for our troubles when the car started steaming. Yup! Honest to goodness. So even though the car had just been in the shop less than a week before to get the oil changed and everything under the hood checked, the sweet smell of coolant came pouring out in its gaseous form to tickle my nostrils with the characteristic smell of a water pump issue. Now of course we were on no less than the biggest interstate in Indiana at the time that this happened, so we pulled over to the side of the road in the hopes that the engine might cool off enough to get us the rest of the way to our desired destination for the day. We may have waited all of a minute before striking out once more, if nothing else than to get off the interstate to a much smaller and less dangerous spot to be on the side of the road. We managed to get to the necessary off-ramp before the car wouldn’t go any further and stopped on its own. Tammy put the poor ole girl in park and called the school, “Yup, we’re on the side of the road, she’s going to be late.” Next she called the lady at the café, “Ummmm, we don’t know when we’ll be there; we’re on the side of the road.” “YOUR ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD! What happened???” And as the story poured out, the lady at the café said those wonderful words “Well, let me pray for you!” So together, we four girls in the car and the one on speaker phone bowed our heads in prayer over the situation asking that God’s will would be done and that His angels of protection would surround us throughout this ordeal. The lady had no more than finished praying when the black unmarked police car with a beautiful red head in the driver’s seat pulled up behind us, lights flashing – God’s sign to me that help is on the way… or HERE in this case!

Michelle the police officer strolled up to our car, all six months of her pregnancy in full view and glory, she truly did glow – at least for us she did anyway, but maybe that was because she was the beginning of the answer to our prayers! For the next hour Tammy and I talked to Michelle about her pregnancy and our own pregnancies, a very common denominator among women, while we waited for the state’s version of Triple A to show up. I think it was about the second or third time that Michelle went back to her car to check on the progress of the mechanic that Tammy and I realized that we had twenty copies of my latest book “The Pink Polka dot Kitty” in her trunk and both decided that she needed a free signed copy! It is dedicated to moms after all and she was about to become one! I had just given her the copy when the light flashing State Police car pulled up. The gun-toting officers stepped out to see what all the fuss was about and took a gander under the hood propped open to cool. The female state officer took control of the situation and told Michelle to call a tow rather than the mechanic that must have been on the other side of town when he got the call. So she called in for the tow truck assistance and the State troopers left to investigate a van that had “caught her eye”.

The troopers had been gone only a few minutes when not one roadside assistance vehicle pulled up, but TWO at the exact same time (the mechanic and the tow truck driver)! In our time of trouble we didn’t get one police car, we got two; we didn’t get one roadside assistance vehicle, we got two!

Our trouble had been an object lesson that God was teaching us, and has become one of my FAVORITE stories to tell lately. God doesn’t just tell us He will bless us, He DOES bless us. He doesn’t just bless us once; He blesses us over and over and over again. In this world we will have trouble, it’s just a fact. BUT, we don’t need to fear that trouble, because we can overcome those troubles. And we can rejoice in them because we know that God will not only bless us in those troubles, but He will doubly bless us for them as well. One of my favorite sayings while in adversity is “God doesn’t let stuff like this happen to me for nothing.” As a daughter of the Almighty King of Heaven and Earth I have such a tremendous and impenetrable hedge of protection around me that there is NO WAY that the Enemy can get through it… unless there is a purpose. And I have the faith and assurance that that purpose is for my good and not my harm. That it is for the good of not just me, but for everyone that I ever have contact with. That everything that I experience in this life is shaping and molding me to be the woman God wants me to be. So when my regularly scheduled day gets pre-empted with something unexpected I have the assurance of knowing that God is doing something in my life that is important and I can rejoice in the silver lining of the rain cloud hovering over me at the moment because I know that the sun WILL come out tomorrow and it will bring with it such tremendous blessings that I have never known before. Yes, life has troubles, but Jesus has overcome each and every one of them and through Him so can we.