“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape.  For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” Esther 4:13-14 (NIV)

Legendary boxer Joe Louis told his opponents that they could run, but they could not hide. Mordecai warned his cousin Esther in the same way.

The Old Testament’s Book of Esther reads like a novel: suspense, beauty, greed, death, intrigue, the possibility of tremendous loss, the surprising victory of the underdog, and the gory death of the Bad Guy. But in the fourth chapter, the situation is far from decided. 

Esther has been tasked with risking her life to save her people, the Jews, the bloodline from which the Savior of the world will come. And Jesus WILL come. “. . . relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but . . ..” Mordecai says.

Just as God placed Esther as the queen of Persia at a special time for a particular reason, so he does with the rest of us. It was God who saved the Jews, not Esther; it was Esther who agreed, at the risk of her life, to be used.

Why are you in Ruston or Natchitoches or Bossier or Los Angeles or Smackover, Arkansas? I don’t know either. But God knows. You are where you are because you are where God needs you to be. If you are not where God wants you to be, He’ll let you know that too. But a Being who can create from nothing a squirrel and a mountain and solar system can surely have the intelligence to use you, whether you are royalty or a serf, for the perfect good of the Kingdom, no matter where you are.

Wherever you are, God is too. Royalty walks with you.

Your location does not determine your limitation. God can do anything through you, if you trust Him . . . right where you are. 

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu

NOTE – This is the second in Teddy’s series of five columns based on Esther.

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