For Such a Time as This

“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

It’s no secret that the name of God is entirely absent from the book of Esther. God is most certainly present, as He always is, but His name—the simple utterance of it—is quite noticeably missing. Again, this isn’t a secret, but it is surprising. The Bible is, after all, a Him book (it’s all about Him) and so it’s curious that God is not talked about or praised in the book of Esther as He is elsewhere in His word.

Throughout Esther’s ten chapters, there are no mentions of the LORD, the temple, prayer, the promised land, or the many tumults and triumphs that dominated the Biblical narrative up until that point. It’s almost as though the book of Esther is something of a side-quest alongside the more weighty, earth-moving, sea-splitting events that make up Israel’s history—creation, the exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Law at Sinai, the call of David, the rise and fall of kings, all leading up to the Babylonian exile, during which Esther is set.

For those of you who haven’t read the book of Esther (or watched the Veggie Tales episode about her adventures), the story really is quite simple, even if the events leading up to it are devastating and tragic. Because of Israel’s rampant disobedience and idolatry against God, stemming from her kings and trickling downwards and then back up again, the anger of the Lord swept across His chosen people in violent judgement. After generations of unrepentant sin, the arm of the Lord was exercised against His people through the pagan nation of Babylon, resulting in Israel’s exile and deportation to a foreign land far from home.

The chief antagonist of the book of Esther is Haman the Agagite who, out of his burning hatred for the Jewish people, seeks to have them all executed by the king’s edict. The identification of Haman as an Agagite is significant as it suggests he has an important association with Agag the king of the Amalekites—the archenemies of the nation of Israel. God commanded the ancestors of Esther to blot out the Amalekites from the face of the Earth: a task they neglected to complete—to their peril.

Just as Israel’s disobedience prior to Esther’s generation resulted in their exile to Babylon, so too did the sinful disobedience of even earlier Israelite generations allow for the wickedness of Haman to subsequently spread throughout the upper-ranks of Babylonian society like a cancer. The burden of this neglect consequently fell upon Queen Esther, a Jewish woman made Queen, as well as her uncle Mordecai, and the many other Jews scattered across the Babylonian domain.

Set against even the epic backdrop of Genesis or Exodus, Esther remains one of the most moving and poetic books in all of the Old Testament. In it, we see from man’s perspective how the Lord God moves through history. God’s name may be absent from the book, but His invisible hand is ever present in the narrative; conducting His sovereign will not through divine mandate or command, but through chance encounters, seeming coincidences, and unmistakeable providence.

As it is with so much of life, God is often entirely forgotten by people going about their daily lives, all the while He remains powerfully—though sometimes invisibly—at work. Perhaps that is an important lesson for us to consider from the book of Esther: God may be silent, completely unmentioned, even, and yet Lord over all He still remains. Indeed, while His name may not be uttered explicitly at any point in Esther’s story, the Lord’s presence so weighs upon the book such that those ten swift chapters feel incredibly crowded, even suffocated, by His rule and reign.

In like fashion, God’s name is noticeably missing from Canadian public schools. Nonetheless, His will is set to their halls and classrooms like a blade upon some great whetstone, shaping and forming it as an object of His good pleasure and for His good purposes; though we may see only sparks and flashing light amidst the shadows and chaos. As with the land of Babylon in Esther’s day, there is a deep, pulsating darkness brewing above the West, threatening boldly with a loud voice of thunder peals and great whips of lightning. And yet, over and above the storm, the Lord stands untroubled; guiding all winds and rain, howling as they may be, towards that end He has determined to be best.

Indeed, the Lord reigns.

And yet despite this joyful reality, like any man, I sometimes wonder if I am where the Lord would have me. Am I in the right profession—was I wise in pursuing this specific career? Or, would He have me elsewhere, only I’m too busy—or comfortable—spinning my wheels where I currently am to see it? These are real questions that, doubtless, we have all wrestled with at some point.

When I became a teacher, I did so because I wanted to, and because I knew that such a career aligned well with the various gifts and talents the Lord afforded to me. As a graduate of the public school system myself, I had a burden upon my heart to go back into that very same system—not merely as a teacher, but as a source of light in the midst of gathering dark. I knew it would be difficult, but exceedingly worth my every effort as Christ worked through me with His energy (Colossians 1:29). I sensed the desperate need for purpose among young men and women,—a need that can only be met by Christ—and I wanted to (and still do!) point these young souls back to Him.

This doesn’t mean those aforementioned questions went away. What it did mean was that I grew content to fight for Christ in this particular foxhole until He deployed me elsewhere. I felt called to represent my Lord in the classroom for as long as He saw it fit for me to do so. Indeed, the words of Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, weighed heavily on me as I pondered what role a Christian could serve in such a workplace:

“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

God is the sovereign Lord over history. We as His children in Christ our Lord can take tremendous comfort in the reality that God has situated each and everyone of us exactly where He means for us to be. In Acts 17:26-27, the Apostle Paul says before the men of Athens, “And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us.”

Down to the minute details of our birthplace, the family we were born into, our place of study or work, and every facet of our lives that lies in between, the Lord is not only in control but purposefully orchestrating it all for our good and His glory. And owing to this fact, we can rest assured in our calling to faithfully preach Christ where we are now, rather than looking ahead aimlessly for some more fertile ground in the future—ground we may never have opportunity to tread or till, save in our well-intentioned thoughts.

This can be hard. Faithfulness demands much patience from us, particularly when we do not see much fruit from our efforts in this lifetime. I think Tolkien understood this truth well when he had Gandalf speak these words on the brink of The Return of the King’s final, seemingly hopeless, battle:

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

Ours is not to know times and seasons and the weather to be of far-off years yet to come. Ours is to trust and obey—to till, sow, and reap in our little garden of the world while we have strength and opportunity such as the Lord provides. Unlike Esther, our faithfulness is unlikely to lead to the salvation of many thousands—but, who knows how the Lord will use our obedience? In any case, we are called to be steadfast in our faithfulness, small as it may seem at times, and leave any increase to God.

If we shrink back in disobedience and keep silent, surely “relief and deliverance will rise” from some other place, from some other obedient individual, but we will not share in that work or its joyful fruit. That is why we must work faithfully wherever we may be—for, “who knows whether you have not come to [be exactly where you find yourself] for such a time as this?”

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Photo by Allen Y, Unsplash

Author’s Note: After my final school placement in October of last year, I set to finishing a short story of mine titled “Shadows Over Fairyland.” It is a fantasy story about a Knight named Gabriel who has been accused of a heinous crime in the fictional land of Camelot (of Arthurian legend and the Knights of the Round Table). Though fictional, I nonetheless attempted to—as with the very best stories, which I am but trying to dimly emulate—speak maturely on real-world darkness and the Great Light which has already begun scattering it into the abyss. In a roundabout way, many of my thoughts for the story came out of the joys and troubles I experienced teaching thus far in the public school system. If you are interested, you can read the story by clicking the button below:

“Shadows Over Fairyland”

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