Year 2, Day 62: Esther 2

Patience Really Is a Virtue

Esther 2 gives us a great start in our quest to learn humbleness and humility.  Today we see how God elevates people who are humble and willing to wait for Him to act.  Today we learn that God desires His ways to be more important than our agenda.

We’ll start with Mordecai.  We hear about the fact that he cares for his orphaned cousin.  He didn’t need to care for Esther.  Mordecai could have thought about himself and let Esther fend for herself.  I’m sure there were plenty of other homeless Jewish children fending for themselves in the streets.  Nobody would have thought any differently had there been one more orphan in the world.

However, this is not Mordecai’s attitude.  He cares for the orphan in his midst.  Speaking from a scriptural perspective, Mordecai has listened to the witness of scripture.  Obviously Mordecai wouldn’t have had access to the book of James {because it wasn’t written for another 500+years!}, but from a Christian perspective James 1:27 tells us that religion that is pure is caring for orphans and widows.  Just because Mordecai didn’t have access to James doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have known God’s opinion on this matter.  Regarding scripture to which Mordecai would have had access, the Hebrew Scriptures have a good deal to say about caring for “the fatherless” and how you can see true justice through people who care for the fatherless.

Through his actions, Mordecai is making a testimony that he values God’s perspective.  He is sending the message that he is just and righteous.  He is doing what it takes to show his humbleness towards God’s ways while he waits for God to use him.  Mordecai may not be able to know the future and how God plans will take shape in the days or years to come, but he is able to live out God’s ways in the present while God prepares him for what is to come.

Esther Is Unique

In the middle of this chapter the story turns to Esther.  Esther goes into the king’s harem and begins to win the favor of everyone she meets.  But there is something different about how she goes about winning everyone’s favor.  In this world, a typical story about a person becoming great focuses on their characteristics and their great qualities.  From the perspective of this world, a story of greatness is all about how a person reaches deep down inside of themselves and through their own ability they become great or famous.

However, Ester is different.  The Bible clearly tells us the key to her success.  Ester doesn’t make any demands about what she should receive.  She listens to the advisors around her.  The key to Esther’s success is her humble approach to life.

I think this is a very important lesson when it comes to life.  The world wants us to think about our own desires.  The world wants us to think about what we can do to make a name for ourselves.  Esther doesn’t think like the world.  She becomes great through her simplicity.  We don’t need to go through life setting big and grandiose agendas.  We can simply look to our station in life and do the best we can.  When we work with what we have, God can take that simple reliability and use it.

Reinforcing the Lesson In Mordecai

We get this same lesson in the final story about Mordecai and the plot to kill (or at least depose) the king.  Mordecai could have tried to use Esther’s new station to his advantage.  He could have been working for self-improvement by using an angle with Esther’s involvement in the king’s harem.  But this is not the case.  Mordecai is simply going through life when he overhears a plot to harm the king.  Mordecai tells Esther and Esther tells the plot to her husband the king.  Mordecai’s simple and servant nature puts him right where God can use him the best.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this topic lately.  It is so easy to have dreams.  It is easy to formulate plans.  It is easy to focus on our success and how we are going to arrive.  But Esther and Mordecai give us a better perspective.  It is better to live humble in the life that God has arranged than to live like a king in a life of our own arrangement.  It is better to pause and be humble in obedience while waiting for God to make himself known rather than to set out and accomplish our agenda.

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