“I wish God would show me a map of my life,” I’ve often said. When we’re trying to figure out what God wants us to do, it seems like giving us very clear directions would be the kindest thing. Yet, at least in my own life, I rarely find the answers as easy as typing in my destination on Google Maps. Seeking God’s will seems like a great thing to do, but actually finding his will can seem nearly impossible. When we look to the Bible for people who faced difficult decisions, Esther is an excellent example.
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| Photo Credit: Andrew Neel |
At first Esther's story seems picture perfect. Plucked from obscurity, she won the favor of the king and and was chosen over all the other beautiful women to become the next queen. As she lived a life of luxury in the palace though, not all was well for the rest of the Jews in the land. One of King Xerxes’ advisors schemed to eradicate the entire people group. For Esther, “hiding” in the king’s palace may have seemed like a literal lifesaver as news of this plot spread. But then a letter from her Uncle Mordecai reminded Esther that even she would not be safe forever, and her position as the queen offered a unique opportunity to perhaps make a difference. While the dark tone of Mordecai’s letter seems almost threatening, he also tells Esther, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”” (Esther 4:14).
It can’t have been an easy choice. Esther knew that she only became queen because her predecessor, Queen Vashti, had been removed from the throne for disobeying the king. By planning to approach the king without being asked, Esther was about to disobey in her own way. She had no way of knowing what would happen, and the stakes were high: Either she'd come out of the encounter still alive, or she would be dead. Her response, while maybe offered with terror in her heart, was, “And if I perish, I perish.”
Rarely do decisions in our lives have such high stakes, yet we often waffle over them much more than Esther did. Mordecai had faith things would turn out somehow--“Relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place”--but Esther was willing to make the choice to do the hard thing she knew was right. What we see in Esther is her willingness to make a choice. She didn’t do it naively or without consideration--she and her attendants and Mordecai and all the Jews in Susa fasted and prayed for three days--but then she made the choice and carried out her plan.
Circumstances in our own lives might not come with a clear right and wrong answer, which can make it even more confusing when we’re trying to discern God’s will. Deciding between two colleges with good programs, deciding whether or not to sell our house, deciding which church God wants us to attend--we can become so afraid of making the “wrong” choice that we make no choice at all. In my own life, there have been times where I waited days or weeks under the guise of “seeking God’s will,” when really had all the information I needed and was simply delaying the inevitable. The book of Esther never explicitly mentions God, but from her action of praying and fasting, we can safely assume she had some level of relationship with him. If that’s true in our own lives, we can make our decisions with the confidence Mordecai had that deliverance would come from somewhere.
We can’t forget the true peril Esther was in, though. She didn’t know what the outcome of her story would be. Yet even if the king had ordered her to be killed, I think we can still draw the same lessons from her story. Esther used the information she had to make the best decision she could in the moment, then trusted God enough to let him use her however he saw fit. Picking the college we think God wants us to might not go perfectly--the classes might not be as good as we thought they would be, or the friendships might not develop the way we had hoped. Buying a house might eventually lead us to financial distress. Going to a specific church might result in hurt feelings and divisiveness. It can make us question if we got God’s will wrong along the way. But maybe the more important question is if we trust God enough to use whatever happens to make us better, holier, and more like him.
[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]
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