This morning, in my Bible study at the Rescue Mission, we read all the way through the the Book of Esther. Usually, we share responsibility for reading; today, I claimed it all. Esther's story is too full of riotous details that we risk missing if we read it in standard serious, biblical tones. It's a wild story, and deserves verbal inflection. That way, it can't help but elicit cries, cheers and booing from its audience.
I slowed down, though, when I got to the passage we're sharing this Sunday. If I were making a movie of the book, this section would provide contrast, with a restrained color scheme, silence in the background, and slow careful speech. It's a big moment:
Mordecai is setting before Esther the challenge of her life: to put her own life on the line for the sake of (possibly) saving her people.
See, she's in a special position--her wild and unlikely life has brought her to a place where she's the only person who can do this thing she's being asked to do. It's as if all her life previous was preparing her for this big moment.
Which is, from time to time, a feeling we all have, I think: at least a sense that, while we'd have never guessed it, some previous challenge in life has given us a set of skills or an insight that's suddenly exactly what's needed.
I love that God offers calls like this to all of us, all the time: a call to use all the particularities of who we are for some beautiful work that, really, only we are in a place to do.
It's not like our inaction at this moment is going to mean the downfall of everything good and godly--but we are called, each one of us, to do something that works because of who we are. That uses our connections, our quirks and our scars to create new possibilities for our people.
May it be so.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
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