“And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” – Esther 4:14 (ESV)
She was an orphan who had become a queen, and she was the only person in the world in the right position to prevent a genocide.
Haman had issued an edict for the destruction of every Jewish person in the Persian Empire, and the edict had been signed by the king and could not be revoked. Mordecai sent word to Esther: you must go to the king and appeal on behalf of your people. Esther sent back a practical response: going to the king uninvited is punishable by death unless the king extends his golden sceptre. I have not been summoned for thirty days. Going unsummoned could kill me. And Mordecai sent back the answer that has echoed across every generation since: if you remain silent now, deliverance will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
This is the question that reframes every life: what if the specific, unlikely, improbable path that brought you to the room you are currently in was not coincidence but providence? What if the education you received, the language you speak, the network you have access to, the experience you carry, the position you occupy, even the suffering you have survived, were all elements of a preparation for a moment you have not yet reached, where you are the only person in the right position to do what needs to be done?
Esther fasted for three days, asked the community to fast with her, and then went to the king unsummoned. He extended the golden sceptre. The enemy who had built the gallows was hanged on his own gallows. The people were saved. And the woman who had kept her identity hidden for years stood in her full truth before the most powerful ruler in the known world and changed the outcome of a story that had been heading toward catastrophe.
There is a moment, unique to your specific life, where you are the only person in the right position to do what needs to be done. You may be in that moment now and not yet recognise it. You may be in preparation for it. The path that brought you here, including the parts that felt most like detour or loss, may have been precisely the preparation for the moment when your voice is the thing that changes everything.
Today, ask God honestly: is this my Esther moment? Am I in the room I am in for such a time as this? And if the answer is yes, fast, pray, gather your community around you, and go to the king unsummoned. The sceptre will be extended. The gallows belong to Haman.
Prayer
Father, show me whether this is my Esther moment, the moment for which all the improbable preparation of my life has been equipping me. Give me the courage to go to the king unsummoned, to speak when silence would be safer, to stand in my full identity when hiding has felt more manageable. If I have come to the kingdom for such a time as this, let me not waste the moment. In Jesus’ name, amen.
