Why do we so
often find ourselves in testing, trying, and troublous times? We are angry.
Disappointed. Despairing. Why would God allow something like this to happen to
us? We worship, honor, and have a heart for HIM, yet events still swirl out of
our control, enveloping us in gloom and doom.
WHY?
A verse from
Esther really spoke to my heart today. "Perhaps you were born for such a
time as this.” (Esther 4:14)
Just imagine
Esther - actually Hadassah, named Esther due to a fear of her heritage being
found out - finding out that the King whom she so recently married is planning
to wipe out her people.
It's an evil
trick devised by Haman but the King does not know this. He hears the lies of
Haman and believes that the Jewish nation is truly a terrible nation with the
sole intent of overpowering the Kingdom of Babylon.
Esther is faced
with a terrible dilemma. Tell the King or save her head and not say anything?
Her Uncle Mordecai comes to her and
tells this profound and beautiful statement. “Perhaps you were born for such a
time as this.”
We all know what happens next. Esther fasts
for three days with her servants and then walks right into the inner court
proceedings of the King. The King must have been startled, since palace law
mandated that the Queen should never come before the King unless summoned. In
the end, the Jewish nation was saved and Esther remained Queen. But it took
guts for her to do what she did – and it took a very different outlook on life.
An outlook that looked beyond the temporal and more towards the eternal.
Could it be that the whole problem
in our lives is that our outlook on life is rudely distorted and so temporarily
inclined that all we see is injustice, sadness, and misery?
What would happen if we changed our
perspectives and thought of this terrible event as maybe a way for God to shine
HIS peace through us, touching a life that we would never have been reached had
we been angry and despondent?
It takes guts to stand up to
adversity and meekly say, “God must have a purpose behind all this. I may not
see it now, but someday, or maybe even on “the other side” I will understand.”
That takes faith, courage, and
fortitude. When everything is going good and life is balmy we can easily have
peace. But what about when things are not going so smoothly? Can we leave
everything with God and say “Lord, YOU made me for, yes, even such a time as
this. Let your NAME be glorified!”
My prayer is that we will try to
re-examine our attitude.
Because, maybe – just maybe – we
were put on this little world for “such a time as this”.
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