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“If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place…who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” – Esther 4:14
In 1993, I had bought tickets over the phone with Ticketmaster to a concert held by one of my favourite bands. It was just over a month out, and since this was a time before the use of automated phone calendars, I wrote down the date for this concert on the paper calendar that hung in our kitchen.
Vibrating with excitement, I went down to the stadium the morning of the concert so that I could pick up my tickets and have them on hand that night. The young woman behind the counter looked confused as I asked her to find my reserved tickets. She said to me, “I am so sorry, but that concert happened last night.” I was devastated. I had written the concert down for the wrong date, and as such, I missed my opportunity to see the band play.
You ever missed an opportunity like that? Maybe you had a miscommunication with someone, or maybe something unfortunate happened at the last minute, and as a result, some great opportunity passed you by. Chances are, we all know how that feels.
Queen Esther had a moment that could very easily have ended up that way. She was married to the King of Persia, Xerxes I. You might think that such a title gave her complete freedom to do and say whatever she liked. But she was not even allowed to enter her husband’s throne room without a formal invitation from him beforehand.
Through messages sent from her cousin Mordecai, a servant at the kingdom gate, she came to learn that all the Jewish exiles living in Xerxes’ kingdom were slated for execution. That included both her and Mordecai. Her conundrum: to go uninvited into the king’s throne room and plead for the lives of her people and risk expulsion or even execution OR stay silent on the matter and let the chips fall where they may.
Mordecai writes to her and says, “If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place…who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” His point is that God will deliver the Jews some way no matter what. But maybe Esther’s position of influence could be the way God will deliver the Jewish people. Yes, it’s risky. Yes, she might die trying to make her plea.
For many of us today, we struggle to know how God might use us in the situations in which we find ourselves. “Do I take the risk of talking about Jesus to others in my workplace knowing that I might get fired for proselytizing?” “Should I quit my job and become an overseas missionary knowing that I might put my family at risk?” These are all-too-common questions.
I would say this; if God intends for your coworkers to know about His Son, Jesus Christ, that will happen no matter what. But maybe you are the way He desires for that to happen. And if that’s true, that makes the risk all too worth it. If God wants a people group living in a foreign country to know the message of the gospel, He will find a way for that to happen no matter what. But what if YOU’RE His intended messenger?
Esther had a choice. It wasn’t something forced upon her. Mordecai made it clear that she could have stayed silent and then God would have found some other way to deliver the Jews. The same God who used Esther wants to use you in the advancement of His kingdom. My prayer is that you would want to be used for such a time as this.