“For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” — Esther 4:14 (NIV)
Mordecai’s question to Esther is one of the most well-known lines in the scripture. But it lands differently when you read it in context.
Haman’s decree had gone out. A date had been set for the destruction of every Jewish person in the Persian Empire. The decree was irrevocable under Persian law; even the king could not undo what he had signed. Mordecai was in sackcloth and ashes at the palace gate, weeping publicly, which was how Esther learned that something was catastrophically wrong. When she discovered what Haman had done, she sent a message back to Mordecai explaining the obvious danger: to go before the king without being summoned was a capital offence, unless the king extended his golden sceptre. She had not been summoned in thirty days.
Mordecai’s response is not comforting in the way we might expect. He does not reassure her that it will all be fine. He does not promise her that God will protect her if she steps forward. He says something more demanding and more honest: do not think that you will escape this simply because you are in the palace. If you stay silent, deliverance will come from somewhere else. But perhaps, Mordecai suggests, the reason you are here, the reason all of this happened to you, the reason a Jewish orphan girl became queen of Persia, is for this exact moment.
The word perhaps is worth sitting with. Mordecai does not claim to know God’s purpose with certainty. He is not giving her a prophecy. He is giving her a framework for interpreting what she has been through in light of what she is being asked to do. The accumulation of unlikely events that brought her to this palace, this position, this moment, makes it at least possible that this moment is why she is here.
We each have versions of this question. The path that brought you to where you are today, the unlikely sequence of events, the doors that opened and the ones that closed, the people who came into your life and the ones who left it, is entirely possible that all of it was preparation for a moment that has not yet arrived. Or for a moment that is arriving right now. The question is whether you are willing to step into it.
Today, ask God to help you see your current position not as coincidence but as appointment. What is the moment your story has been preparing you for? What are you being trusted with right now that requires you to be exactly who and where you are?
Prayer
Father, help me see my life as preparation, not accident. I bring the position I am in before you, knowing you placed me here. Give me the courage to step into the moment this season has been building toward. In Jesus’ name, amen.
