So I’m doing Beth Moore’s Esther with a group of awesome twenty-somethings. I love the text, I love the girls, and I love the fact that we only meet every other week (to allow us enough time to do all that “homework”).
As I was working through a part of session three today, I was struck by the perfection of God’s timing. Despite working on the girls’ Bible study Esther: The Role of a Lifetime last year, I hadn’t really dug into every verse, as Beth is leading us to do. I’m at the (previously rather-unexciting-and-mundane) part where the royal secretaries have been summoned and the death sentence for the Jews is being delivered to everyone in the Persian empire.
But I’d never noticed before that the Jews’ first whiff of the doom awaiting them was inhaled on none other than Passover. While they were celebrating the deliverance from Egypt, they got word of their own desperate need for more rescuing. To be dealt such a blow while remembering the God who saved His people before—how would you handle it? I’m not sure how I would have responded then, but it put me in tears this morning.
In what Haman intended for absolute evil, God was already at work. And by allowing the message to be delivered on a day when His people’s minds were already focused on His faithfulness, I think He was telling them to remember that He’d done it before and could do it again. Talk about an opportunity for your faith to shine!
But how often do I let the enemy’s attacks weigh on me without even looking for where God is working? I don’t know about you, but I forget to remember His faithfulness. I wonder if the girls in our ministries today are even aware of where He's been faithful to them. I assume I’m on my own, and today’s little lesson from Esther reminded me that I am most certainly not. I feel challenged to make sure others (especially our precious girls) know that they're not on their own either.
Today, I’m basking in the fact that I worship this God who has been (and will be) so faithful. I hope you are too!
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