“Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created.” - Esther 4:14
The story of Esther is a famous one that has been recounted everywhere from Sunday school classes to the Hollywood big screen over and over again. The sort-of Reader’s Digest version is that an orphan girl from no means finds favor with the King and ultimately saves her people from mass genocide. But there is more to Esther’s than just that, right? I mean there are only two books of the bible that are named after women: Ruth and Esther. So we have to ask ourselves what it must be that makes these women so worthy. Ruth’s story can be summed up in a sentence as well: A woman’s husband dies, she follows her elderly mother in law to a foreign land where she finds favor with a wealthy land owner and ultimately becomes something like the 28-times great grandmother of Jesus. The obvious commonalities in these two women’s stories are that they are both displaced from their homes, they both find favor with wealthy, powerful men- but risk ...
