I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Esther 4-7.

The exchange between Mordecai and Esther contains themes we can all understand.  Mordecai publicly mourned over the threat to the Jewish people posed by the edict Haman had issued.  We have lost a sense for petitioning God in the way that Mordecai was doing here.  Throughout the Old Testament we see numerous examples of this sort of prayer and petition to God.  I am not even sure how to give a generalized description for what they did, for what Mordecai was doing here.  It seems to me that Mordecai spent the time he would normally have spent on his personal grooming crying out to God for rescue. And because he was not going to take any care of his clothes, he wore only the cheapest possible clothes.   I was not planning on going this direction with this, but as I read the passage and began writing I felt a need to write about it.  As a society today we could use a revival of this very public abandonment of decor in order to cry out to God, whether in repentance for our sins, or for rescue from our troubles.

Now, back to the point I was going to make before I took that detour.  When Mordecai asked Esther to use her position to address the threat to her people, she was reluctant to approach the king.  To be precise, she was afraid to do so.  I can only imagine Esther thinking, “Why me? Why do i need to do this? Couldn’t someone else do it?”  Mordecai’s response to Esther was a message we all need to hear, “You are where you are because God put you there for this very purpose.  If you don’t do it, God will use someone else, but this is your purpose in life.”   We can all sympathize with Esther’s dilemma, hopefully we will also act as she did.   When Esther decided to act, she asked her support group to fast and pray for God to guide her actions and intervene on her behalf.

I want to make one final point about the contrast between Haman and Mordecai.  Haman sought glory and recognition.  His actions were intended to advance himself.  Haman was angry because Mordecai did not stroke his ego and was not afraid of him.  He acted in ways to increase his importance and in order to make sure everyone knew how important he was.  Mordecai, on the other hand was humble.  He had saved the king from assassination and then went on about his business without any special recognition.  Haman’s arrogance and pride led to his downfall, while Mordecai’s humility led to his elecation.