3Advent Monday: Thoughts on Esther and Mordecai

I love the book of Esther, no part more than when Mordecai speaks the word of the Lord to Esther when she has been favored by the king whose consort she is, and Mordecai tells her that as Jew, it may be "for such a time as this" that she has been placed in this odd situation in order to advocate for her people.

I have often, and still often, find myself in situations in which I think I have been placed for a particular reason, but as I live in it, a Mordecai person in my life calls me to think about my situation differently. I went to Community UMC in January of 1997, thinking I was going there to help them build a new building on a piece of land they had purchased--instead at least in part, I was sent there by God to help them have the courage to purchase an already existing building. I was sent to Broadway, mostly, as I recall in perhaps imperfect hindsight, as a sort of "reward" in a sense, since I had been through so much personal trauma at Community, and had worked as diligently as that would allow, and Philip was starting school at Saint Paul School of Theology and the cabinet was sympathetic to our children's situation even though we were already divorced. It would have been a nice place just to "rest" for a while at that time. But, soon we were involved in strengthening the existing ministry with a local public school and talking about a coffee house.

It is not only in these kind of situations that I have thought I knew why I was called to do something and yet it turned out that there was something I did not know in the beginning of being placed in that particular situation that turned out to be the most important thing that I could do. Recently I have realized that a person in my life, with whom I have had a rocky relationship, and who I really get peeved at sometimes, really needed me, not just anybody, but needed ME so that she could share thoughts and feelings she was having that she couldn't with others. I had been concentrating so much on how unfairly I was being treated by her, how insensitive she was, how wrong she is to treat me and others I know in such cold and calculated ways, that I had not stopped to think what was going on her life. I had not realized that because of some things I have experienced in my life, and perhaps because I do not have any trouble expressing my feelings, my own pain, my joy, my hurt, she needed someone (ME) with whom she could talk t--someone who wouldn't be blown away by the difficult place she and her family are in. When I realized that, it was a moment of Godliness for me. And a friend with whom I shared this said, "perhaps it is for such a time as this" that I had been placed, perhaps in Kansas City, perhaps in a sphere of influence within this woman's life, because I am not blown away when people who seem to have it all together admit to me that they don't---perhaps this is why I was here and am here. And that has brought a very warm and spirit-filled sense of awareness and a new care for this woman whom I had been resenting and on whom I had spent so much negative energy but whom I have, in the best places of my heart, want to love. This has been a God-with-us experience for me. Emmanuel. Praise God!