Robertson McQuilkin doesn’t fit the stereotype of what we imagine a famous lover might look like. He was a seminary president; a little dowdy perhaps, a bit nerdish, at least by Hollywood standards. He had climbed to the top of his career as an educator when his wife Muriel was diagnosed with Alzeimer’s. After a few difficult years of trying to manage both his work and the care of Muriel he decided he only had one choice.

So Robertson became a homemaker and a caregiver. When he accepted his new life, he thought of it as an end to his ministry. Instead, it was a beginning of sorts. Not only was he now caring full-time for Muriel, but he was discovering that such a choice was both unique and rare. In a culture like ours, a culture that prizes individual freedom and self-realization, Robertson McQuilkin became (unexpectedly) the model lover.

Let me cite a passage from A Promise Kept that seems to sum up Robertson’s story. This moment takes place when Muriel had already begun to decline in her mind, although still able to be quite mobile. Because of the Alzheimer’s, Muriel was often restless, and sometimes panicked. But Robertson was patient with her:

Once our flight was delayed in Atlanta and we had to wait a couple of hours. Now thats a challenge. Every few minutes, the same questions, the same answers about what we’re doing here, when are we going home? And every few minutes we’d take a fast-paced walk down the terminal in earnest search of — what? Muriel had always been a speed walker. I had to jog to keep up with her.

An attractive woman executive type sat across from us, working diligently on her computer. Once, when we returned from an excursion, she said something, without looking up from her papers. Since no one else was nearby I assumed she had spoken to me or at least mumbled in protest of our constant activity.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “I was just asking myself, ‘Will I ever find a man to love me like that?’”

[Robertson McQuilkin. A Promise Kept. p.18-19]

Its a simple anecdote, to be sure, but the beauty and power of it is clear. And that is why I nominate this rather plain looking academic as one of the great lovers of our time.

In our current reductionism, where love is sex, and sex is mere physicality, we have lost the image of great love. It is therefore necessary for us to find stories like that of Robertson and Muriel McQuilkin, stories that anchor us in a deeper meaning and higher calling. Of course, there was a time when Robertson and Muriel were lovers in the usual way we think of that term. But their love for each other did not deplete in the passing of their youthful beauty and physical strength.

In Ephesians 5, Paul tells husbands to love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church. If you need to see how such a calling actually works, get the book.

Bob Osborne

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.

This past Sunday we began our series Sex and Money. We began with a talk about the relational dynamics of marriage, the true center of sexual identity and expression. While our present era thinks about sex as mechanics and body parts, the Bible speaks of it as a powerful expression of sacred identity and faithful relationship. The Bible speaks of sex within the context of covenanted relationship. As Chris led us through a meditation on Proverbs 5 we saw how this is so.

The church has, at times, avoided talking about human sexuality as if it were not there, or as if it somehow did not connect with issues of faith. But our sexual identity is at the core of who we are, and who we are matters to God. And to top it all off, we have to say that God dreamt all this up; all one has to do is to read the Song of Songs to see how the erotic is sanctioned by God when it is pure and whole. So we want to be clear that sexuality is good and to be celebrated. The caveat, however, and perhaps the thing that is beginning to sound strange in our present culture, is that sexual expression is meant for marriage. Sexual expression is meant for the context of covenanted love. Only within that context can sexual expression grow and mature and become all that it is meant to be.

Let me recommend a beautiful love story which may help you see this: Madeleine L’Engle’s Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage (HarperCollins, 1988). L’Engle, a celebrated author, tells about her marriage to Hugh Franklin. They are two of a kind, lovers of words and poetry and theater. When they find each other, and begin to build a life together, they become lovers in the truest and fullest human sense of that term. And, of course, it all begins with such ecstasy, such passionate intensity. L’Engle recounts how Hugh proposed to her:

He picked up a book of poetry off the shelves and began leafing through it, and then he read me Conrad Aiken’s beautiful words:
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
And then he said, “Madeleine, will you marry me?” [p. 68]

You can hear the violins. The emotions and passions are real. But what L’Engle then does for us, and what many of our current stories fail to do, is to show us the whole picture of her love with Hugh, a love that grows and matures through the course of their entire lives. To borrow from the quote I began with, you see Madeleine and Hugh growing up. Their marriage is the place where their love matures. L’Engle says:

A love which depends solely on romance, on the combustion of two attracting chemistries, tends to fizzle out.  The famous lovers usually end up dead.  A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship.  It is certainly not that passion disappears, but that it is conjoined with other ways of love. [p. 76]

What L’Engle is showing us is the essence – and may I say brilliance – of marriage as this commitment to covenantal living. Marriage is the place we learn what real love is, the love that begins in the white-hot heat of sexual attraction to be sure, but then commits to endurance, and protection of the beloved, growing into the love that can only be found in and through time. As the story draws to a conclusion, L’Engle describes her husband’s illness, his withering body. But that doesn’t stop their love.

I go to my lonely bed, thinking of Hugh alone in his hospital room, grateful for the nurses who are so good to him. During the night I reach out with my foot through force of habit to touch his sleeping body. And he is not there. Nevertheless, we have been making love during this time in a profound way. He is making love with me in the pressure of his fingers. I am making love when I do simple little bodily services for him. How many times has he taken care of me! And that is intercourse as much as the more usual ways of expressing our sexuality. [p. 184]

L’Engle’s reflections on her own marriage through its seasons and changes gives us a window into what it means to be loved and a lover.  I think these are the kind of stories we need.

See you this Sunday as we continue our series.

Bob Osborne

Every year we construct a prayer walk to help focus our thoughts and prayers. There are five stations in this year’s prayer journey, each designed to help your prayer be focused and effective. We are opening the Westhall from 9 am to 9 pm, Monday through Wednesday, January 9-11, so that you can participate. Special evening teaching sessions are at 7 pm.

We know that Christian life must be lived out in active engagement, but we also know that effective engagement requires deeper piety. It seems this lesson must be learned and re-learned: that movement is empowered by stillness, that impact is made possible by quiet reflection.

Our January prayer days remind us of the power of sacred time and sacred space. We learn that periodic separation from ordinary work and obligation makes realignment possible. So this is what these days are for – to do the simplest, yet hardest thing – to make space and time to listen to what God says, and to answer back from our truest selves. By committing ourselves to the practice of giving up work-time for prayer, and making space for reflection and stillness, we find that we are freed from the petty tyrannies that control us. We move into a more wide-open country, becoming partners with God in the life he has in mind for us.

This year we are calling our time the Epiphany Days of Prayer. Epiphany is that moment in the Christian year, 12 days after Christmas, when we wake up to what God is doing for us, through us, and in us because of Jesus. Epiphany is a kind of capstone to Advent. Now, as we see Christ born into our humanity, we realize that there is more to understand, more to see, more to journey forward into. The birth of Christ is not an end but a beginning, the first part of the story that redefines everything. So we want to have our spiritual senses alive to God. Because of Christ we can see God, see what meaningful actions are possible, see the obstacles and hindrances, see the object of our faith and learn true worship, and see a new way forward.

For these days, and in keeping with the traditional story of Epiphany, we are immersing ourselves in Matthew’s account of the Magi’s visit to the house of the Christ-child (Matthew 2:1-12). Our meditation on this text will help us understand what spiritual awakening can actually look like.

Come any time Monday through Wednesday, 9 am to 9 pm, or attend one of our evening teaching and prayer sessions at 7 pm. I hope to see you there.

Bob Osborne

In the beginning the Word already existed.
      The Word was with God,
      and the Word was God.
He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him,
      and nothing was created except through him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created,
      and his life brought light to everyone.
The light shines in the darkness,
      and the darkness can never extinguish it.

God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

John testified about him when he shouted to the crowds, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘Someone is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’”

From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

Our Christmas prayer is that the light of Christ would shine into every open heart, that each of us would be given grace to see the light of His glory and grace.

Have a blessed Christmas.

Bob Osborne

How Gently He Comes

In times past, when all names meant something,
His parents obediently named him Jesus,
Joshua in the Hebrew language: “God saves”.

But he had many names,
For there were many things to say
About who he was, and why He came.

Centuries before his arrival, Isaiah called him
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Prince of Peace — on long and idle days in the fields,
The shepherds would sometimes muse on the dream of better times.
How should one imagine this promised King’s arrival?

And then he did come — gloriously — with angel armies in triumphant song.
But there was also something else: an unmistakable quiet, an awe-filled gentleness.
The shepherds carried it in their hearts for the rest of their lives.

In the days and months which followed,
When the fields were quiet again, they were quiet in a different way.
The song of “peace on earth” had entered their hearts.

We sometimes fear the quiet because it feels lonely and absent;
But have you ever known quietness as presence, quietness as fullness?
Yes you have, if only for a moment of winter wonder.

Its the quiet you feel on the night of a fresh snow fall.
Its the quiet that wraps you in mysterious and unexplainable tranquility.
Its the quiet that muffles the noise of the world with an almost tangible gentleness.

On the night when the Prince of Peace was born
In a little town, outside of Jerusalem, and far from Rome,
Something entirely new was born with him: a quiet presence, a quietness full of God.

There is no mistaking that this was the birth of the King.
There is no mistaking that God’s salvation has come in Jesus.
There is no mistaking that God is now with us in the person of His Son.

But what surprises us, and settles us, and calms our fears,
Like the shepherds discovered as they entered His presence with awe-struck wonder,
Is how gently He comes.

[Bob Osborne]

This past Sunday, Chris introduced our Advent series with these words: “we are looking at the incredible and unexpected religion-breaking and future-altering newness that entered history 2,000 years ago”. That is a stunning sentence. Thanks Chris. And yet it doesn’t overreach. How could it? Christmas demands such language.

Still, in the much more tranquil and tamed form of Christmas we know and love, Christmas is anything but the description Chris gave it. Christmas is sentimental; a rehearsal in the old and familiar. How is it anything like an “unexpected religion-breaking and future-altering newness”? But the original Christmas was.

To read the gospel stories of Jesus’ birth is to understand that a full-on disruption of expectation and order is taking place. Perhaps the symbolic reason there was “no room for [him] in the inn” (the traditional rendering of Luke 2:7; literally “no place in the guest-room”) was that the birth of the one we call Emmanuel (God-With-Us) was not merely a temporary inconvenience; it was quite rightly a category-breaker. The birth of Jesus broke the mold of human expectation.

This is deeply challenging to us if we are honest. Especially for those of us quite fond of the quieter side of Christmas, the silent night of calm and heavenly peace. I admit I would be one of those persons. I like the quiet and ordered life. I like knowing what I can expect, what I can count on. But then I read the stories of Jesus’ birth and I see how his coming into the world is not only the big surprise, but the big disruption as well.

So here is my Christmas question: are you (and I) able to give up on normal, expected hope (the hope we want to manage and understand), and exchange it for the hope God brings in his own disruptive way? Can we trust him for that? As was pointed out on Sunday, the stories of Elizabeth and Zechariah, followed by the story of Mary, point to this kind of reality. As these characters are taken up into the bigger story of Jesus, they discover how hope is being re-ordered. God does not so much fulfill our dreams as replace our dreams with something far more wonderful, something we could never have dreamt up in the first place.

CS Lewis wrote that the gospel, “does not tell of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about, Man. And the way in which it is done is selective, undemocratic, to the highest degree.” Lewis continues:

“After the knowledge of God had been universally lost or obscured, one man from the whole earth (Abraham) is picked out. He is separated (miserably enough, we may suppose) from his natural surroundings, sent into a strange country, and made the ancestor of a nation who are to carry the knowledge of the true God. Within this nation there is further selection: some die in the desert, some remain behind in Babylon. There is further selection still. The process grows narrower and narrower, sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear. It is a Jewish girl at her prayers. All humanity (so far as it concerns its redemption) has narrowed to that.”   [CS Lewis, Miracles, p. 120).

The thought, so well captured here by Lewis, is of the challenge that God’s actual salvation makes upon us, its obvious disruption to our plans, and its surprising pathway. In the story of Israel, we see how God chooses unusual ways and unusual people. He is the initiator: he chooses the how, the when, and the what. Very little of what we would call normal hope happens here. Instead, the thing we learn about God’s hope is that it surprises, it startles.

We invite you to read the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel and see how this works. The responses of the characters are crucial: Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary, the Shepherds, Simeon and Anna -- all have something to say, and do. All respond to what God initiates.

But as we began on Sunday, at the center of the story is a young girl, about to be married but still a virgin, chosen to be the human womb for God’s grandest miracle, the moment when God became one with us. After the angel announced this plan to Mary,

Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” [Luke 1:38, NLT]

May you find yourself responding to what God initiates with a “yes” this Christmas, and may you be most blessed.

Bob Osborne

This is the story’s visible turning point, the moment when Haman’s hateful pride become his undoing. Up to this point evil seems much more powerful than the good; Haman’s plot to exterminate the Jews appears fully guaranteed by the inviolable laws of the Persians. But then, as almost out of nowhere, the tables turn, and quickly. Haman doesn’t see, nor can he, that Mordecai’s faithful service to the king (2:22) will be remembered at the moment he comes to talk to the king about putting Mordecai to death (6:4). It is an uncanny illustration of providence, a mysteriously God-infused moment (see 6:1).

Consider then the “grand reversal”, when what is intended for harm snaps back into salvation itself. This “small” story of Esther is a way of seeing the “big” story we are all part of. We watch as Haman, his prideful imagination in full swing, thinks he is about to be honored, only to realize that the advice he gives the king will honor his hated foe Mordecai instead. Pride reverses back into shame, and murderous intention back into deliverance. To read Esther chapter 6 is to see how evil’s moment of apparent victory is simultaneously its moment of defeat. It must be that way. Haman will quickly meet his end by the very means he devised for Mordecai.

This coming Sunday marks the completion of our Esther series. We will try to wrap up the story with some helpful perspective. Sunday also marks the first Sunday of Advent, that time in the calendar when we begin our season of watching and waiting for the coming of God’s Son into the world. As we now see Jesus enter our human story, we also see the demise of evil.

In response to last Sunday’s message, and the beginning of the Christmas season now upon us, I was reminded of a familiar christmas carol, written in the 19th century by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The carol considers the deep issues we have been rehearsing in the story of Esther. Do you know the tune?

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Its all there, isn’t it? All the pieces of the grand story of human history we see reflected in the story of Esther. In Longfellow’s imagination, the bells of Christmas remind us of the ultimate promise of peace on earth, the triumph of good. But that middle verse reminds us of the crisis at the heart of history, the temporary season when hatred is strong, its tone full of mocking and arrogance. But then, as Longfellow reflects on these things further, he knows the inevitability of what must happen. Its in that third verse: because God is alive and real, because goodness is inherent in the one who rules everything (though often unseen), the ultimate destiny of all things is peace on earth.

The Jewish theologian, Abraham Heshel, said, “The statement, ‘God is’, is an understatement.” I love that quote. The story of Esther is one more example of the ultimate fact of God and the inevitable triumph of goodness over evil. Because ‘God is’, goodness and truth and peace must ultimately prevail, and evil must inevitably meets its demise. This is the grand story we are part of.

See you Sunday.

Bob Osborne

Reflections on the Esther story:

1. how surprised are you at the speed of Haman’s undoing in chapter 6 and 7? what examples of evil’s downfall in history are especially poignant for you?
2. how do you understand the dynamics of the king’s insomnia in 6:1? read Proverbs 21:1 and comment on how God is involved in this moment.
3. if you are aware of the concept of irony and how it works, consider the ironies of chapters 6 and 7. how might irony be a hopeful idea?
4. how has the story of Esther helped you as a person of faith?

As with any really good story, danger now appears. Are there any meaningful stories without risk or threat? Whatever sense of normalcy there is at the beginning of the Esther story now shatters. The Jewish population of the Persian empire find themselves the object of Haman’s murderous plot. The dice have been thrown to select the day (3:7), and now the clock and calendar have begun their respective countdowns. A great evil is about to be unleashed.

It is at this moment that Esther comes to realize the meaning of her life, a meaning found in a moment. While she has been “positioned” to do something about the threat that looms, the key is that she will actually do something. Her position is only her opportunity, no more. Yes, there is danger; yes, there is risk. But now she must act.

These are the famous words of Mordecai which anchors our story: “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”  [Esther 4:14, NLT]

In his wonderful exposition of this week’s text (Esther 4-5, get the podcast), Chris posed some penetrating questions: how do we define what it is we are looking for in life? Are we in search of safety, or meaning? And if we are in search of meaning, can we really avoid risk? Is there any real living without risk?

As we watch Esther choose her actions in the critical moment we realize that time is more than a way of counting the hours and days. Time itself is a way to mark meaning. To live wisely requires that we understand the meaning of our moments.

“What time is it in the world?” That haunting question was threaded through U2’s recent concert shows, voiced by Bono, graphically represented on the giant screens above the stage. “What time is it in the world?” I have been thinking about that question for months now.

What time is it indeed? Is it a dangerous time? A time of decision? A time of great opportunity? How would you interpret our historical moment? I listen to social commentators and political pundits. I wonder who really knows what time it is in the world. Who can tell us whether or not this is a dangerous time, a time of decision, a time of great opportunity? Maybe it is all three at once.

And then I make that question more personal: what time is it in my life? How would I describe the meaning of my age and place? What is the meaning of my present moment?

You may have heard that the Chinese character for crisis is actually composed of two characters: “danger” and “opportunity.” A crisis moment brings us to a point in time where two possible ways appear before us, two possible outcomes. A crisis presents both the danger and the opportunity, and the difference is found in the choice made.

Perhaps we need to re-imagine our relationship with time. In koine Greek (the language of the New Testament), there are two words for time. Chronos suggests chronological time, this relentless march of moments. Chronos is the idea that our experience is broken up into fragments which we simply quantify as “then-now-later”. But kairos helps us where kronos is deficient. Kairos is more of a meaning-loaded word, pointing towards value and significance. Kairos reminds us that there is a purpose in this moment or season of time, and it is that purpose that I must be conscious of.

What time is it in the world? What is the purpose for this time in your life?

See you Sunday for Esther part four.

Bob Osborne

I have only two basic questions for this week’s reflection:

1. what time is it in the world? how would you describe the essence of this present historical moment? what are the big issues? what are the dangers? what are the opportunities?
2. what time is it for you in your personal life? what distinctive meanings could this particular season of your life hold?

If you are reading the text of Esther, the following comments are based on 2:19 to 3:15. In this portion of the story we learn of the emerging struggle between Haman and Mordecai, and the plot to eliminate the Persian Jews.

Haman is, at heart, an overly proud man. He is what one might call egomaniacal, a person who cannot be happy working for the common good, a person who must somehow assert himself “above the herd”. Such people, such ways of thinking, are inherently dangerous as we see in the story. It is, in fact, Haman’s pride that becomes the seed-bed for a great evil thought.

Having been honored by Xerxes to “chief among the nobles”, it greatly bothers Haman that Mordecai will not bow to him. The reasons for this refusal are not stated, but it could be rooted in Mordecai’s faith; as a Jew, he will bow to no one but God (hinted in 3:4). But Haman doesn’t care about such things. He doesn’t care about the common good. What motivates Haman, as we see through the story, is recognition, adulation, and the glory of power. So, realizing that Mordecai the Jew will not bow to him, and that neither will his people, he hatches an evil plot. He will rid the land of Jews so that everyone will pay homage to him. The dice (purim) are thrown (3:7); the day is selected when the Jews will be eliminated. The calendar now begins its countdown.

Let’s dial back a bit. At the heart of this struggle between Haman and Mordecai are two visions of life. On the one hand there is the “zero-sum” worldview of Haman, the belief that in order for one person or group to do well, there must be a corresponding loss or diminishment somewhere else. In other words, there are winners and there are losers, and that this must be so, a highly competitive and inevitably violent way of looking at the world. On the other hand there is the common-good worldview of Mordecai, who, although being a Jew in exile, sees the well-being of the empire as something all should strive for. He actually uncovers a plot to overthrow Xerxes and reports it (2:21ff), a point that will become relevant to the story later on.

And then there is this: how evil often hides itself behind the impersonal, how it tends towards abstraction, towards systems or collectives rather than people with names and faces. The reason king Xerxes falls for Haman’s plot to eliminate the Jews is that he doesn’t attach the collective to the persons in the group. He doesn’t think that he knows a Jew, or would love one if he did (remember who Esther is? I said last week that this story was deeply ironic). Knowing what we know about Mordecai’s loyal goodness and Esther’s relationship to the king, the threat, as most evil threats, makes little sense. The king, for some reason swayed by Haman’s twisted logic, has lost his reason.

The king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was bewildered.  (3:15).

What can be done? That part of the story now awaits us.

See you Sunday for Esther part 3.

Bob Osborne

Questions for reflection:

1. How do you understand human pride? Why is it dangerous? What is the nature of humility and how does it add to the common good? Reflect on the character of Jesus.
2. How do you understand the idea of zero-sum thinking (look up “zero-sum game” on Wikipedia). How do we practice zero-sum thinking in our economics, in our relationships, in our culture? Is there another way?
3. When the evil plot is hatched, the dice are thrown to select a day. This might be thought of as chance versus providence (see last week’s discussion). Discuss the perspective that comes from knowing our lives are held in the sovereign hands of God, versus the perspective that our lives are ruled by chance. How do you see things?
4. Why do you think the city of Susa was bewildered (3:15)? What was non-sensical about the evil plot hatched by Haman? How is evil non-sensical?

This past Sunday we began a new series in the book of Esther. We hope that our engagement with this Biblical story over the next month will prove to be both deeply grounding and personally encouraging. The story of Esther shows us how providence works, how the life of faith is deeply rooted in the purposes of God. While Esther’s conditions are admittedly spectacular, and the resolution to her story awe-inspiring, we hope that seeing these big ideas in action will make a difference for each of us. Without exaggeration, our smaller stories are not out of sync with Esther: God works in the details of our lives too, and for our ultimate good.

Our text this past Sunday was Esther 1:1 — 2:18, which sets up the context of the story, the winding path of how Esther was taken into Xerxes court and became Queen of Persia. While that may sound like a very good thing to happen, we noted that there are a lot of complicating factors to consider here, a lot of things that are not good, not good at all. Esther was “taken” (2:8), against her will to be sure. But this is the life Esther finds herself in, the life she has to live.

This first movement in the Esther story sets us in context. It is a strange world to us — a despotic king, Persian laws and court politics, the king’s harem — but we quickly learn to adjust to what we find here. These are the conditions in which life has to be lived. This is the world as we find it: not all that we want it to be, or think it should be, but the way it actually is. Life is most often less than ideal, and sometimes quite troubling. The question for Esther and Mordecai, and for us by extension, is how can we live well from the place we find ourselves in?

While the circumstances Esther finds herself in are not of her choosing, she is about to wake up to the inherent meaning of her story. Esther is about to find out the incredible good she can accomplish because of the place she finds herself in. It is vital that we all wake up to meaning.

As we begin our series in Esther, I am wondering if you would be able to take time to discern your context, the place where you are. I am not excluding the physical spaces of your life, but I mean to push it further than that: where are you in the journey of faith, in the discovery of your life’s purpose? Where are you in the realization that grace is far deeper, more profound, more basic than you have realized? Where are you right now? Are you waking up to the meanings in your life? These are questions worth contemplating. See if you can find an image to describe where you are.

We said on Sunday that Esther is one of the great Bible stories. We also said it was an unusual story because it does not actually name God. It is a Bible story without obvious God-talk. For me, this is the beauty of the Esther story, that God is working in deeper ways than we can name. He continues to lead us on, even past our awareness that he is doing so.

We continue this Sunday with a plunge into the central crisis of the Esther story. Things are about to get a whole lot more challenging, and quickly. Things are going to get downright dangerous. But this will be the same place where God presents himself, although silently, and without being named.

We are inviting you to read the story in your Bibles. If you intend to engage this story in a more focused way through our Do-It-Yourself Small Groups, then you will want to take note of the questions at the end of this devotional.

See you Sunday for Esther part 2.

Bob Osborne

Questions for reflection:

1. Is there a place in your life you think of as safe and/or joyful? Is there a place you see as sad and/or fearful? What have you learned about the meaning of place in your life?
2. In reading the beginning of Esther’s story (1:1 — 2:18), how would you counsel Esther about the place she finds herself in? Put yourself in Mordecai’s role. What would he say to her?
3. On Sunday we talked about providence, that God is deeply embedded in the details of our story even when we do not see or hear him. Have you been able to reflect on the providence of God in your life? What do you understand about this idea?
4. How would you characterize the place you live in now? What evidence of God’s working do you see from where you are right now?