I will exalt you, my God and King, and praise your name forever and ever. I will praise you every day; yes, I will praise you forever. … The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness. The Lord is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth. He grants the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them.[Psalm 145:1-2,17-19 (NLT)]
After Esther fasted and prayed about approaching the king, she had both courage and a strategy. From the way Xerxes was so easily manipulated by his Persian noble friends and Haman, it’s clear that he was a temperamental, weak, and foolish man; Esther used that knowledge to her advantage. When she dressed in her finest robes and approached the king, I imagine she made sure he was in good spirits and that she looked irresistible. Welcoming Esther and offering her half his kingdom, Xerxes invited his queen to ask for anything, but she knew better than to take the royal offer literally. Graciously, she only asked for his and Haman’s presence at a banquet that evening. Esther’s delay didn’t mean she’d lost her courage. Persian etiquette for making a request typically began with a small unrelated favor, which is what Esther did. After a pleasant evening, she beguiled Xerxes simply by inviting him to dinner again. Gaining one small concession at a time, she eventually worked her way up to the real issue at hand. By waiting to make her appeal, Esther aroused the king’s curiosity.
A banquet was the perfect setting for Esther’s request. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, Persians typically decided important matters when they were drunk; once they’d sobered up, their decisions would be confirmed. That certainly was the case when the drunken Xerxes banished Queen Vashti. On the other hand, any decisions made while sober were suspect and were to be reevaluated when the parties were intoxicated (which may explain why Xerxes and Haman sat down to drink after their apparently sober decision to eliminate the Jews)! Esther understood the importance of alcohol in the king’s decision making and, after two nights of banquets, she finally made her request while they were drinking wine. When Esther asked the king to save her life and the lives of her people, she prudently put the blame for the wicked plot entirely on Haman rather than her easily manipulated husband.
By necessity, Esther made her plea to the king in a calculated and roundabout way. Fortunately, we don’t have to strategize or scheme when we approach our Heavenly King! Because we are His beloved children and know that He loves us, we don’t have to worry that God’s interest in us has waned. There’s no need to dress in our finest attire to entice Him nor must we wait until He extends his golden scepter before approaching His throne. God is far more interested in our hearts than our appearance and our imperfect selves can approach Him any time. We don’t have to pique God’s curiosity or manipulate Him into asking us what we want because God knows what we need even before we do! We don’t have to carefully phrase our words out of fear that He will banish us from His presence if we displease Him. We certainly don’t have to ply God with vintage wine, start with little favors before working up to our big request, or wait until He’s in a good mood before offering our prayers. God is the same today as He was yesterday and will be tomorrow. If we have no words, the Holy Spirit will speak for us.
Let us never approach God with subterfuge and apprehension as Esther did Xerxes. We should come to Him as candidly as did David and the other psalmists. With our Heavenly King, we can honestly sob in sorrow, shout in anger, plead in distress, stammer in confusion, whisper in fear, weep in regret, confess in repentance, shout in praise, sing in thanksgiving, and even dance in joy—all without fear of banishment from His presence!
When writing about Esther last week, I thought how terrified she must have been when Mordecai asked her to step out of her comfort zone to save the Jews. Even though she was queen, her access to Xerxes was severely limited. Living secluded in a private chamber in the women’s quarters, she didn’t regularly dine with the king. Powerless, she was the one to be summoned rather than the one who did the summoning and she hadn’t been summoned by Xerxes for a month. She was just one of many beautiful women in the king’s harem and perhaps someone else had caught his eye. The previous queen was banished when she defied the king; Esther could expect nothing less if her presence wasn’t welcomed. The young queen had a simple choice: comfort or courage. She chose courage and saved a nation!
While I expected bear sightings when we lived in the mountains of Colorado, I never expected a bear to find its way into our Florida community and scavenge in a neighbor’s trash bin on her driveway! While bears generally prefer natural foods like berries and nuts, as civilization encroaches on their habitat, those foods are becoming less abundant. Driven by their need to eat, bears will go where they can find any food. With a sense of smell that is seven times greater than a bloodhound’s, it’s estimated they can smell a food source from as far away as 20 miles. Opportunistic creatures, they take advantage of whatever is easily available, whether bird seed, pet food, barbecue grills, or garbage.
Once upon a time, a little boy was busy digging in the sand at the beach. Like other youngsters through the years, he thought he even might be able to dig all the way to China. His steadfast excavations got so deep that he encountered a large rock. With great determination, he dug and dug with his plastic shovel in an attempt to free it from the ground. Unfortunately, the little boy and his small shovel were no match for the rock. When the shovel broke in two, the boy let out a howl and burst into tears. Hearing the child’s cries, his father immediately went to comfort him. Through his sobs, the boy told how he’d tried and tried to free the rock but was too weak, his arm was too short, and he’d broken his only shovel. His father gently asked why he hadn’t used all of his strength. “But I did, Daddy, I really did!” exclaimed the boy. “No, son, you didn’t,” explained the man as he reached into the hole, grabbed the rock with his large hands, and pulled it from the ground. “You should have called me!”
Evil is anything that contradicts the nature of God and it’s easy to see Satan’s presence in malevolent acts like terrorism, genocide, slavery, torture, and human trafficking. The enemy, however, is usually far more subtle. Evil also includes things like anger, pride, fretfulness, immorality, pettiness, selfishness, deceit, envy, spite, unforgiveness, hatred, hypocrisy, envy, jealousy, greed, and unkindness. Although we’re more likely to find them in our hearts than genocide or murder, they’re not as easy to recognize. Because it’s easier to see the evil done by others than it is to face the evil in our hearts, we don’t spot Satan when he comes slithering into our lives.
The early Christians often marked anniversaries of the martyrdom of Christ’s followers. By the fourth century, however, there’d been so many martyrs that there weren’t enough days to honor them all and the idea of one feast day honoring all the martyrs began. In 609, Pope Boniface IV established an All Saints’ Day in May. After Christianity came to Ireland, however, the Roman church attached the Feast of All Saints to the pagan holiday of Samhain (a celebration of the end of the harvest and precursor to Halloween). In 847, Pope Gregory IV formally rebranded this pagan Celtic festival as All Saints Day. Saturday, November 1, is All Saints’ Day and, regardless of your denomination, it remains a day to commemorate all of the saints, not as determined by any Pope, but as defined in the Bible.
