WHAT ABOUT WHEN GOD SEEMS SILENT?

By Dorman Followwill

Before becoming a pastor, I worked for a time as a management consultant for a firm in San Francisco. Though my firm knew I didn't want to travel much because I was a family man, soon after starting I was assigned to a long project in Toledo, Ohio. I was told that I would be traveling for five days a week, week in and week out, over the next eight months straight. After two months of that grind, Blythe and I both concluded we'd had enough time apart, and we decided to move out of our apartment with our newborn baby, put all of our possessions in storage, and move to Toledo. Once there, we found ourselves in a city without a single church that taught the Bible well. And my job was my personal nightmare scenario. As a businessman, there were only two things I knew for certain I never wanted to do: work in a bank and work as an accountant. But my eight-month assignment in Toledo was to work in the accounting department of a $4 billion bank. We knew almost nobody in town. It was my time of exile, a time of questioning. Many a night I would drive home in my rented car shouting out toward the dashboard, "Where is God in all this?" It wasn't even a prayer, just a bitter outcry to a God who seemed silent, especially as the long winter months wore on. I knew I was not in the right place, and it felt like God was nowhere to be found.

What about when God seems silent? We all ask such questions at times. In fact, I received a letter last week from a man I know who faithfully served God in a very difficult place for eight years. He met huge obstacles at every turn. Recently God called him to return home to California. Here is part of what he wrote in his letter: "But where was God during all those dark days and weeks and months and years? Where was he during all those lonely seasons? Did he know, did he see, did he hear? Why didn't he do something?"

Perhaps you have felt like this before---the sense of isolation fostered by the little voice of self-condemnation that whispers to you, "You don't belong here." Maybe you feel trapped in an impossible relationship, a marriage characterized more by sullen silence than by open communication. Maybe you feel as though your prayers fall back in your own face, unheard. You feel exiled from God, and he seems strangely silent.

When the story of Esther unfolded in the history of Judah, the whole nation was in exile far from home, surrounded by former enemies and foreign gods. The Jews were under threat of genocide. At their hour of greatest need, God seemed silent.

Overview of the book of Esther

There has been more debate about the book of Esther than about any other book in the Hebrew Scriptures. Its authorship has been difficult to determine, and no one knows for sure exactly when or by whom it was written.

But the greatest controversy swirling around this book is due to the fact that nowhere in it is the name of God mentioned explicitly. It is the only book in the sacred Hebrew Scriptures in which the Name does not appear. The Jews have debated about this for centuries, even up to our own day. In the Christian world, "Martin Luther, in one of his occasional lapses of self-restraint, went so far as to say that he wished the book did not exist!" (Explore the Book, J. Sidlow Baxter). But the fact that God's name is missing in this scroll fails to prove he was not behind the events in the story and the authorship of the document. He simply had a greater purpose in omitting his name from this little narrative.

Since it is such a brilliant story, I will simply tell it to you. Then we will reflect on the outline underlying the story and the key points to be gleaned from it. Finally, we will consider the inscrutable wisdom of God in leaving his name out of the text.

Esther: the story

Right away, we learn that the story is historically rooted "in the days of Ahasuerus, the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces." This great king ruled over the largest kingdom in the ancient East. His royal throne was centrally located in the city of Susa. In the third year of his illustrious reign, he threw an emperor-sized banquet. It was quite likely his marriage banquet. The banquet lasted six months, the time it took him to display his extensive royal splendor before his guests. When these 180 days were complete, the king threw another banquet for seven days. While he was throwing this "men-only" banquet, Queen Vashti his wife, the daughter of King Cyrus and the granddaughter of King Nebuchadnezzar, threw a "women-only" banquet. At the height of his drunken revelry, the king called for a servant to summon Queen Vashti before his guests, so that he might display her beauty. Most commentators agree that when he specified that she wear her "royal crown" in Esther 1:11, it meant that she was to wear only her royal crown, and nothing else. In her nakedness, the king and his drunken mates could better view her beauty. However, being the daughter of mighty emperors, this woman was not going to be trifled with in such a lowly and undignified manner, so she refused the king. The king was enraged, and asked his seven princes what should be done to the queen as punishment.

The last of these seven princes, Memucan, spoke first. He said that the queen's conduct would undermine the authority of the husband in every home in every corner of the realm, and thus she had to be hastily punished if the social order was to be maintained. He said that an edict should be written according to the laws of the Medes and the Persians, so that it could not be repealed (we will see that there is a bit of foreshadowing here), that Vashti (he quit using the title "Queen" midway through his speech) should see the king no more and that another woman more worthy than she should be elevated to her place. This edict would undergird the social more that every man should be the master in his own home. The king was pleased by Memucan's word, and Vashti was executed.

However, the second chapter began with the king's regretting Vashti's execution. If he had merely divorced her, as king he could have easily had her recalled to his side. The matter weighed on the king's heart. Seeing this, some of his servants suggested that it was time to begin the search for a new queen. This pleased the king, and the search was begun.

Now in the middle of chapter 2, the story really begins. What has happened so far is a prologue included merely to provide context for the more important narrative to come. A Jew named Mordecai is introduced, as is his cousin Hadasseh, or Esther. We are told that Mordecai had taken her to his home as his own daughter, and reminiscent of the Joseph narrative in Genesis, especially Genesis 39:6, "...the young lady was beautiful of form and face...."

Esther was soon swept up in the dragnet in which all young virgins were taken to the palace to be tried out by the king to see which one would be his wife. Esther was taken against her will to the king's harem. But, as with Joseph before her with his jailer in Genesis 39, "...the young lady pleased [Hegai, the king's eunuch in charge of the young women], and found favor with him." Esther was given the highest place in the harem. Then she and the other young women underwent a year-long beautifying course. Each virgin was prepared for her night with the king, since the king spent one night with each young woman, after which she was transferred to the harem of the concubines until "she was summoned by name." She could only come when summoned. When Esther's turn came, she humbly adorned herself simply before the king, and "Esther found favor in the eyes of all who saw her." Esther was taken in to the king, "and the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she found favor and kindness with him more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti." The king then threw another banquet to celebrate his marriage to Esther. Throughout this entire selection process, Esther kept her racial and national identity as a Jewess a secret, under the wise counsel of Mordecai.

Then a seemingly irrelevant plot twist occurred. Because Esther had been made queen, Mordecai had remained as close to her as possible to continue to watch out for her welfare. While he was sitting at the king's gate, he overheard two of the king's doorkeepers plotting to assassinate the king. Mordecai promptly told Esther, who quickly alerted the king in Mordecai's name. The plot was investigated and both of the conspirators were "hanged on a hangman's pole" (a bit of foreshadowing again). The event was recorded in the Book of the Chronicles. But nothing more was said of Mordecai's good service to the king at that time.

Now suddenly the villain of the melodrama is introduced. After all this, King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the descendant of Agag, the Amalekite king who had been a bitter enemy of the Jews in Saul's day in 1 Samuel 15. The king commanded all his subjects to bow down before Haman, and all obeyed except Mordecai. Mordecai stubbornly refused to bow down before Haman, edict or no. When Haman saw this defiance, he was enraged, and "therefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus" (i.e., Haman plotted a final solution for all the Jews in the whole world at that time, a genocide of the Jews). Haman cast the lot, called the Pur, to determine when he should enact his sinister plot. The lot was cast daily until the go-ahead was given in the twelfth month, Adar. Then Haman waited until sometime in the following month, the first month, to broach the subject with the king.

Thus Haman approached the king, and told him a very benign version of his genocidal mania. He offered to pay the king ten thousand talents of silver as blood money to betray the Jewish people to their death. The compliant king gave his all-powerful signet ring into Haman's hand and told him he could keep his silver and write whatever edicts he wanted to write. Haman must have been thrilled in the dark recesses of his heart, because he knew that any edict sealed with the king's ring would be irrevocable. He summoned scribes, composed the edict letters, and sent them to the four corners of the wide empire. The edict set aside the thirteenth day of Adar as the day the people in all the provinces of the king were "to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children...and to seize their possessions as plunder." The edicts were sent and displayed in all the provinces, then the king and Haman sat down to drink comfortably, while the city of Susa below was in a state of confusion.

When Mordecai learned of this horrifying edict, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and ashes, went into the midst of the city, and mourned loudly. All the Jews throughout all the provinces likewise mourned greatly, along with fasting, weeping, and wailing. Many put on sackcloth and ashes. When Esther heard the news, "the queen writhed in great anguish." Then there was a flurry of correspondence between Mordecai and Esther. Esther sent Mordecai some fresh clothes to replace his sackcloth, but he refused them. Then Esther sent word to Mordecai to learn more about the specific stipulations of the edict. Mordecai related to the messenger the exact amount of money Haman had offered in the grisly transaction, and he gave the messenger a copy of the edict. Mordecai also sent word ordering Esther to go before the king and plead with him for her people.

Esther's response to Mordecai's command to go before the king was this: "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that for any man or woman who comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, he has but one law, that he be put to death, unless the king holds out to him the golden scepter so that he may live. And I have not been summoned to come to the king for these thirty days." Her refusal was simply, "If I go before the king, who has forgotten me for a month, I will probably be killed! Remember what he did to his last wife!"

This is one of the darkest moments in the history of the Jews. They were powerless, in exile under the iron rule of a dictator whose favorite man hated the Jews with a passion. A final solution had been proclaimed, and it had become the law of the land. They were doomed. No wonder they wailed and panicked. But there is a different way to respond. Mordecai found it.

Upon receiving Esther's initial refusal, Mordecai wrote back to her, "Do not imagine that you in the king's palace can escape any more than all the Jews. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?" This ranks as one of the greatest statements of certain faith in a seemingly silent God found anywhere in the Scriptures. Against everything he could see, Mordecai believed in his sovereign God, that he was working behind the scenes of human history for the good of his people.

This eloquent statement of faith from Mordecai was answered by an equally moving one from Esther: "Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way. And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish." These statements of great faith in their mighty but silent God are the turning points of the narrative.

On the third day of the fast, Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court in front of the king's rooms, where she could be seen by the king sitting on his throne. As he saw her, "she obtained favor in his sight; and the king extended to Esther the golden scepter which was in his hand." Esther humbly approached him and touched the top of the scepter, and the king asked her what her request was, promising to grant it even to half the kingdom. But Esther cloaked her true request with a much simpler one: that the king and Haman attend a private banquet she would provide. Being very wise, Esther wished to keep her real request enshrouded in mystery until the king was most favorably disposed to grant it to her. The king quickly summoned Haman, and the banquet was quite a success. While it was in progress, the king again pressed Esther about her true request, figuring she hadn't risked her life to invite him and Haman to a little dinner party. But again, Esther merely invited the king and Haman back to another banquet the next day, at which time Esther would intimate her request. The mystery had been well built by now, and the king must have spent much of the night wondering what was in the queen's mind to make her risk her life. Perhaps this was why the king did not sleep well that evening.

Haman, on the other hand, was utterly puffed up with pride that he had been invited to an exclusive dinner party with the two most powerful people on the face of the earth. He went home and summoned his wife and friends to a dinner party of his own, at which time he recounted to them the glory of all his riches, but his glory was tarnished a bit by the memory of his adversary Mordecai. Haman's wife Zeresh then suggested he build a hangman's pole roughly seventy-five feet high, and then ask the king to let him hang Mordecai on it. This advice pleased Haman, so he had the pole constructed.

As I said before, the king could not sleep that night. So, to occupy his royal time, he called in his servants to read the Book of the Chronicles before him. During the reading, they came to the record of how Mordecai had saved the king from the assassination plot, and the king asked if any honor or dignity had been bestowed on Mordecai for this good service. The servants checked, and through some "coincidence," it appeared that nothing had been done for Mordecai.

Just at that moment, the king heard someone in the court and asked who it was. It was Haman, who was coming to request that the king let him hang Mordecai on his new hanging pole. When Haman entered, the king asked Haman his opinion about what should be done for the man whom the king desired to honor. Thinking the king would want to honor no one more than himself, Haman told the king that this honored man should be given one of the king's own robes to wear while he was led through the city by one of the royal princes on one of the king's own horses, with the prince proclaiming, "Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor."

In a dramatic reversal, the king charged Haman to so honor Mordecai for his life-saving deed. Thus Haman himself was the prince who led Mordecai, decked out in the king's robe and riding on the king's horse, throughout the city. Imagine the laughter that must have met the dark-faced Haman when the people of Susa saw him leading on the king's steed the only man in the city who would not bow down before him! Imagine the jeers and cheers that met his proclamation, "Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor." This was only the beginning of Haman's reversals, for when he recounted his story at home to his wife and friends, they prophetically announced to him that "if Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish origin, you will not overcome him, but will surely fall before him." Just as they finished telling him this, messengers arrived from the palace to take him to his fateful banquet....

At the private dinner, the king again pressed Esther to make known her request, promising to grant it even to half of his kingdom. Very strategically, as if moving her queen into position in a chess game, Esther said, "If I have found favor in your sight, O King, and if it please the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request; for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king." What a deft reminder of his imperial majesty at just the right moment! Then the king asked Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who would presume to do thus?" Esther must have dramatically pointed toward Haman, saying, "A foe and an enemy, is this wicked Haman!" Checkmate! Haman then became terrified before the king and queen, as well he should have.

The king was so enraged that he went out into the palace garden to cool off a bit. Back inside, Haman was throwing himself all over Esther's couch, pleading for his life. When the king returned, in a delicious reversal of the Joseph narrative in Genesis 39, he misunderstood Haman's intentions, saying, "Will he even assault the queen with me in the house?" It doubled his anger at the man. As soon as the servants heard such a serious accusation from the mouth of the king, they knew Haman was doomed. They quickly covered Haman's face so that the king would not have to look at him any longer. One of the servants then quietly directed the king's attention to the seventy-five-foot-high hanging pole at Haman's house, noting that the pole had been built for Mordecai. The king summarily said, "Hang him on it." So they hanged Haman on the hanging pole that he had prepared for Mordecai. A more classic example of poetic justice would be difficult to find anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Following this, Haman's house was given to Esther as a prize, and Mordecai was called before the king. Esther had disclosed that Mordecai was her cousin and had been her guardian, and as a result Mordecai was promoted to the second place of power in the realm and given the king's signet ring. Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman.

But while Mordecai's deliverance had occurred, the greater deliverance of all the Jews was still to come. Esther once again entered unannounced before the king, and he once again extended the golden scepter to her. She pleaded before the king to revoke his previous edict concerning the Jews, "to revoke the letters devised by Haman...which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king's provinces." The king noted that he had given Haman into Esther's hand, and he then instructed her to "write to the Jews as you see fit, in the king's name, and seal it with the king's signet ring; for a decree which is written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's signet ring may not be revoked." In short, the king said he could not revoke the first order, but that they might write to the Jews a counter-order.

Mordecai seized this moment, and composed letters which were then sealed by the king's signet ring and sent by the swiftest horses to the farthest outposts of the realm. The letters stipulated that "the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including women and children, and to plunder their spoil, on one day in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month (that is, the month Adar)." Thus Mordecai leveled the playing field on the day of battle: whereas the first irrevocable edict had given the Jews' enemies leave to kill the Jews on the thirteenth day of Adar, Mordecai's edict gave the Jews the right to defend themselves and slay any enemies who attacked them on the thirteenth day of Adar.

Whereas Haman's edict was met by the collective mourning of the Jews, Mordecai's edict was met by the collective celebrating of the Jews. Whereas Mordecai had clothed himself in sackcloth when Haman issued his edict, he was clothed in majestic blue and white robes after his own edict was delivered by the couriers. "For the Jews there was light and gladness and joy and honor. And in each and every province, and in each and every city, wherever the king's commandment and his decree arrived, there was gladness and joy for the Jews, a feast and a holiday." Even more significantly, the Jews' light became a light to the nations here: "And many among the peoples of the land became Jews, for the dread of the Jews had fallen on them."

Finally the thirteenth of Adar arrived. "... On the day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, it was turned to the contrary so that the Jews themselves gained the mastery over those who hated them." Suddenly, none of the Jews' enemies could stand before them, "for the dread of them had fallen on all the peoples." Even the provincial governors, princes and men of power in each province, helped the Jews, "because the dread of Mordecai had fallen on them." In fact, from that day forth, Mordecai became greater and greater.

In Susa, five hundred enemies of the Jews were killed. Of these five hundred, ten men are highlighted in the text in a very odd fashion that is unique in the Hebrew Scriptures. These ten men were the sons of Haman, who were all hanged on the same hangman's pole on which Haman was hanged. The ten names of Haman's sons are listed along the right margin, followed by a blank line beside each name, one on top of another. But if you look very carefully in the Hebrew text, the first letter of the tenth and final son of Haman is enlarged to almost twice its normal size. It just so happens that this letter, a vav, looks exactly like a hangman's pole. This enlargement in the scroll was intentional, according to some Jews: "The letter Vav of Vayzasa is enlarged in the Megillah [the Hebrew name for the five scrolls of which Esther is one] like a long pole to indicate that they were all strung...on one long pole (Megilla 16b)." (Artscroll Tanach Series, The Megillah, Book of Esther). No one who has read this scroll can ever forget these ten names, all sons of the Jews' ancient enemy, one on top of another, with the hangman's gallows on the bottom name, showing how the ten were strung one above the other on the pole.

While the outlying areas fought against their enemies only on the thirteenth day of Adar, Esther received a special dispensation to continue the battle into the fourteenth day in the capital of Susa. In the rural regions, the Jews rested from their battles on the fourteenth, while in Susa they fought on the fourteenth and slew three hundred additional enemies, and then rested on the fifteenth day.

The story ends with a fitting epilogue: This great victory over the Jews' enemies was to be celebrated on the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar on an annual basis. There was to be a great feast, much rejoicing, and sending of portions of food to one another as well as giving of gifts to the poor. This feast is still celebrated today. It is called the Feast of Purim, which is an ironic name, recalling the way Haman cast the Pur to determine when to move against the Jews. The book concludes with an appendix of historical interest, recounting Mordecai's illustrious career in King Ahasuerus' court, and eulogizing the way Mordecai "sought the good of his people and...spoke for the welfare of his whole nation." Thus ends the story of Esther.

But what does it all mean?

Esther: a poetic outline

To understand the meaning behind this marvelous story, we first need to see the literary structure of the narrative that helps us to identify what is most important in the text. Below is an outline of this narrative that reflects the main elements of the story in a specific poetic order known as step parallelism:

Prologue: royal banquets/pagan festivals: 1:1-2:4

A. Esther introduced, "finds favor": 2:5-20

B. Mordecai saves the king: 2:21-23

C. Haman promoted: 3:1

D. Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman: 3:2-6

E. Haman's plot to destroy Jews: ring given, edict issued: 3:7-15

F. Jews' mourning: 4:1-12

G. Mordecai's statement of faith in deliverance,

Esther's statement of faith in deliverance: Esther 4:13-17

Turning point of the narrative.

A. Esther presents herself before king, "finds favor": 5:1-8

B. King honors Mordecai for saving him, foiling Haman's plans: 5:9-6:14

C. Haman executed, based on Esther's plea: 7:1-10

D. Mordecai replaces Haman: 8:1, 2

E. Mordecai's plan to defend Jews: ring given, edict issued: 8:3-14

F. Jews' rejoicing: 8:15-17

G. Deliverance of the Jews!: 9:1-19

Epilogue: feast of Purim/Jewish festival: 9:20-32

Historical appendix about Mordecai: 10:1-3

This literary outline affirms what most students of Esther have long suspected: that the great statements of faith in deliverance made by Mordecai and Esther in Esther 4:13-17 are the heart of this narrative. While there is no specific mention of God as the object of their faith, Mordecai expected divine intervention in some form in the salvation of his people, an expectation that is wholly reasonable in light of the key theme of the promise of Messiah throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. God's promise was to preserve his people, because through his people would come the Messiah, the promised Seed of Genesis 3:15 who would be the great Redeemer of all humanity. Mordecai, a devout Jew in spite of his exile, knew the Jewish Scriptures and expected the saving God of those Scriptures to deliver his people once again, in spite of the evil machinations of the sons of their ancient enemies the Amalekites. At the darkest moment, Mordecai lit a match of faith in a cave of despair. His faith was a defiant "nevertheless" in the face of Haman's seemingly irreversible edict.

Likewise, Esther was the very picture of saving faith when she literally put her life on the line in order to save her people. Her great statement of faith, "If I perish, I perish," is a poignant foreshadow: She was willing to die in order to save her people. She ordered the three days of fasting in order to bathe this bold action in prayer to a God of deliverance---the God who stopped Abraham's hand from slaying Isaac, the God who preserved Rahab from the ruin of Jericho when she risked her life for the Jews. If Esther had not specified the three days of fasting, we could chalk up her act to the supreme sacrifice a patriot might make. But the fasting hints at prayer offered in faith to a God who has a long history of delivering his people, even when it seems as if he is silent.

These statements of faith are the turning point in the story. Once these words are uttered, the evil plot of Haman unravels immediately, step by step. The whole book is designed to prove that faith in deliverance during the darkest moments unleashes God's power and victory on behalf of his own. As the great old hymn says, "Faith is the victory that overcomes the world." This book thus teaches the best lesson of all: Believe in God no matter what, especially when he seems silent. Is there any more central message in the Bible than salvation by faith in a God who sometimes seems silent, but who is nevertheless the sovereign Deliverer?

Esther: the main point of the story

Finally, let me return to the question that has plagued this mighty scroll since the day it was first written: why is God's great Name absent from it? I believe the answer to that question lies in the historical context in which this book was written. Regardless of who the author was, it is most likely that this book was written on the cusp of the roughly four hundred years of silence known as the Intertestamental Period, that between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This was a period of great tumult for God's people, both at home in Judea and in their wide dispersion abroad. It was during this period that Alexander's armies swept the known world, as far east as Persia. The end of this period was marked by the rise of the Roman Empire. It was also during this period that Zerubbabel's temple in Jerusalem was desecrated in 167 BC by Antiochus IV (Antiochus Epiphanes) when he erected an altar to Zeus there and sacrificed a pig on it. During all this historic upheaval, there was no prophet who spoke the words of God to his people. They were in a period of strange silence. God did not just seem silent, he was silent, except for his written word already in existence.

But into this silence God sent a little scroll called Esther. What other book would have more surely stirred the Jews to believe in God during those silent centuries than this one? In this book, God's name is noticeably absent from the text. He seems to be silent. But He is everywhere in the tightly interlocking details of the story, behind the scenes of pagan history, bringing about salvation for his people and continuing to be unerringly faithful to his great promise to bring Messiah through the Jews. During a historic period when God was silent, but when his great engines of redemption were operating on all cylinders in preparation for Messiah, there was no better book to spur his people to faith than the book of Esther. Furthermore, had God's name been explicitly used here, the dramatic forcefulness of this little book would be diminished, its main point of salvation by faith in the silent but sovereign God blunted. But this greatly loving Shepherd-God prepared his people for a unique time of silence by sending them a scroll in which his name was veiled but his mighty hand of deliverance directed the events to the great blessing of his people.

So what about when God seems silent? Trust in his deliverance anyway; cling to him no matter what. If you are in a dry season and your prayers seem to rise to heaven no better than lead balloons, cling to him no matter what...He is a deliverer who can be trusted. If you are experiencing the suffocating silence of a loveless marriage or chronic loneliness, cling to him no matter what...He can be trusted.

In the season of silence, rather than panicking or yelling toward the dashboard, we can hope in his deliverance. We can look for it expectantly. His deliverance will come, and it always comes in strange but wonderful packages. When Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, God sent an angel and a ram in a bush. When Israel was enslaved in Egypt, God sent his deliverer to a Princess in a tar-covered basket floating down the Nile. When Joshua thought he was God's general to give the people their land, Joshua came face-to-face with the real General, who truly won their battles. When 135,000 Midianites camped in the valley below Gideon and his 300 men, God delivered Gideon from his fears through a foreigner's dream about a little loaf of barley bread rolling down a hill. When Haman wanted to kill the Jews, God sent Mordecai to overhear the doorkeepers and made the humble Esther a courageous queen. When four hundred years of silence were over and the nation was under the thumb of Rome, God sent a Baby to be born in a cave. And when all the world was under sin and doomed to die, God doomed himself to die on a cross. When it seems as if he is silent, don't be fooled for a minute. He is everywhere working on behalf of his own. Trust in him no matter what...especially when he seems silent.

Catalog No. 4444
Esther
by Dorman Followwill (followwill@aol.com)
First Message
June 18, 1995

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