Friday, October 3: Esther 9- Am I complicit?.

This chapter drives to the Jews victory over their enemies. God has protected His people. God placed key people in certain positions for just such a time as this. In my spirit I hear, for those who follow Jesus our ultimate victory is secure. This truth, of course, is the principle teaching elsewhere in Scripture and is not built on the account of Esther.

Even as I was noting the above, my heart was drawn with sadness to the king’s response in the middle of the chapter. The king said to Queen Esther, "The Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men and the ten sons of Haman in the citadel of Susa. What have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? Now what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? It will also be granted." 

"If it pleases the king," Esther answered, "give the Jews in Susa permission to carry out this day's edict tomorrow also, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged on gallows." So the king commanded that this be done. An edict was issued in Susa, and they hanged the ten sons of Haman. The Jews in Susa came together on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, and they put to death in Susa three hundred men, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder. Meanwhile, the remainder of the Jews who were in the king's provinces also assembled to protect themselves and get relief from their enemies. They killed seventy-five thousand of them but did not lay their hands on the plunder.  (12-16).

75,000 people killed and the king doesn’t even bat an eye. I couldn’t get this thought out of my head. How little value human life has for some people. We see it in atrocities throughout our world. And contrary to what I would like to believe, “Christians” perpetrate this kind of violence as well as people of other religions. Religious, racial, ethnic, economic… all these forces seem to drive our human atrocity machine.

How sad this must make the Lord. We are all created in God’s image and yet, too often, life is treated with disrespect.

As I mused on this, God turned things so that I would look inward. Do I harbor religion-ism, racism, ethnocentrism, economic-ism… (I know some of these words self-concocted). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus took some of the commandments and said it was not only the overt action but also the heart-action that breaks God’s laws. Lust is as sinful as adultery. Angry name calling is as sinful as murder.  Do I commit religious, racial, ethnic or economic atrocities in my mind and heart and so break God’s heart???

Do I look the other way when I see real atrocities or life devaluing actions by individuals or systems? This, too, breaks God’s heart.

Lord, I know that my meditations have drifted far afield of Esther but Your Spirit is gnawing into me. Where have I been silent when I should have spoken? Where am I silent that I should speak?

Oh, Lord, forgive me. Show me…

Through Jesus’ name and for Your glory, I pray. Amen