Who Rolls the Dice

Excerpted from heart of the story by Randy Frazee

Esther 4:1   "If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. What's more, who can say but that you have been elevated to the palace for just such a time as this?"" (v. 14)

What if your greatest fear, your heaviest burden, has been given to you “for such a time as this”?

 

Esther could have told her cousin to mind his own business: “Leave me alone. It’s comfortable in the palace. Being a queen has its privileges. Let God take care of our people. Only a fool would risk all that I have.” And who would have blamed her? Look what happened to the last queen who refused to obey the palace rules!

 

You may never be in a position where obeying God is a matter of life and death. I hope you never are. The worst thing that could happen to most of us for taking a stand for God is a little ridicule.

 

People may think we’re fanatics if we walk in a March for Life. Our neighbors may be offended if we hold a “Backyard Bible School” for one week in the summer. Our colleagues at work may call us “Bible thumpers” if we pull out our compact New Testament and read it in the break room. Other parents may not like it when we go to a school board meeting and politely share our concerns about intelligent design being left out of the science curriculum.

 

You may even think it’s crazy to wake up in the middle of the night burdened about a friend at work who is going through a divorce. You have this wild idea that if you could just talk to him and his wife, perhaps you could help them find a way to save their marriage. You’re not a marriage counselor, but you just can’t shake the feeling that you could do something that may make a difference in their relationship. Then the second guessing begins. Maybe you’ll just make things worse. It’s probably too late and beyond repair. You don’t really know his wife very well.

 

I believe God still speaks to us in a quiet whisper, offering us the blessed privilege of “saving his people” through wild and crazy acts of loving obedience. Imagine the places we could go and the things we could do to reflect God’s love for his children. Imagine what may happen in our families, neighborhoods, cities, nations, and world if we adopt Esther’s commitment as our own: “I will go to the king . . . And if I perish, I perish.”

 

Esther was willing to take her chances because she knew who controlled the dice. Listen to the wise words of Solomon: “We may roll the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall.”3 Are you willing to make the same bet?