Read: Esther 4:1–17

For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this. Esther 4:14

 The Bible tells us that Esther was the Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus. During Ahasuerus’s reign there was a plot hatched to exterminate the Jewish people from the Persian Empire. The only chance the Jews had for survival was the advocacy of Queen Esther. But no one was supposed to approach the king unless summoned. The punishment for making an unrequested advance toward the king was death—even for a queen! Therefore, for Esther to save her people, she had to risk her own life. As Esther weighed the decision before her, her uncle Mordecai encouraged her with the thought that God might have made her queen “for just such a time as this.” 

There are moments in life when we have the opportunity to be advocates for someone or something important, but that advocacy could somehow put us in a difficult or unpleasant situation. We would like to help, but we worry that the personal cost might be too high for us to bear. It is in moments like those when we must consider, as Esther did, that the position we hold we have for the very purpose of that advocacy. The only reason we may be where we are is to step up and step forward in a particular moment of trial. The challenge before you might be the very reason you are where you are. You have been positioned not for comfort but to face an important challenge that can define your life and the lives of others. It might be for such a time as this that you have been placed right where you are.

How have you been positioned to help others?

Lord, for some reason I believe that the positions I aspire to will allow me a degree of comfort and stability. I somehow think that the more authority I acquire will allow me greater ability to chart my own course and set my own agenda. But what if the position I have been afforded is not for my benefit but for the well-being of others? What if I am where I am so that I can step forward and step into a particularly challenging situation that could use my advocacy and presence? What if my position in life has been orchestrated by You for the accomplishment of Your will? As unsettling a prospect as that may be…it lines up well with the stories of the Bible. You place people where they will be needed, not where they will be comfortable. Help me to not shrink from that important reality. In Your name, I pray. AMEN.