Sunday 5 October 2014

God's providence...

So - the same day (THE SAME DAY! What a coincidence!) as Haman has organised to have Mordecai executed, the king can't sleep. Sleepless, he doesn't send for food and drink, or music, or for one of his concubines to entertain him: instead, he asks for the royal records to be read aloud to him, presumably hoping that it would help him get back to sleep. Or, perhaps, as he was wide awake, he thought it a good time to catch up on some work.

Whatever the reason, it was no coincidence. We KNOW that God ordains our steps and organises events for our good.

"“God won’t withhold a single good thing from his children. If a thing is good for us, God will give it to us. If it’s not good, he’ll withhold it. And in God’s kindness, he doesn’t allow us to pick and choose what we would like in our lives.
The promises of God are our weapons in the battle against discontentment. For every temptation to be discontent there’s a promise of God that meets that temptation. The abundant grace of God promised in the Scriptures far exceeds any circumstance we encounter.”
- Stephen Altrogge, The Greener Grass Conspiracy" quoted by Lisa Burgess, Grace Exceeds Circumstances.

Mordecai and Esther face more than discontentment: they face death.

It was, apparently, not unusual for kings to review the court records. go over important incidents, considering what had happened as a result and, no doubt, using history to inform the present and the future. What WAS unusual is that the scribe should come to the very part which recounted the assassination attempt and Mordecai's part in it.

The king had been betrayed by the very men whose job it was to serve and guard him. Yet Mordecai, just a slave, with no particular loyalty derived from any honours the king might have given him, had saved him from assassination.  How the kings would maintain their power and influence is a whole other story, but rewarding service was - and is - one of the methods which rulers use.

Not only that, but he realises that Mordecai had not been given any reward for saving his life.

Proverbs 16:13 says: "Good leaders cultivate honest speech; they love advisors who tell them the truth."

So too with King Ahaseurus.

Esther 6:1 - 3

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