The Lord of all ages and Eternity, yet the
Lord of our days and our lives, blessed us with one of "the Ten
best days" yesterday. It was sunny, stunning, super, and, best
of all, it was Sunday, the Day of the Lord. Sunday is called, "the
little Easter". I was privileged to celebrate my 70th
birthday on a such fabulous, fantastic, and brilliant day. The Lord
blessed in His House with His joy, laughter, and grace. It is always a
thrill and blessing to be in the Lord's house. I praise the Lord that
I was able to preach on my 70th birthday. We were blessed with
very special music. There was a banquet with assortments of tantalizing
foods. Best of all there was wonderful fellowship. I was reading
the temperature on one of the outdoor signs. It was reading in the high
80's. I said, "this is my kind of day".
Alice and I drove in the afternoon to
enjoy the panoramic colors and brilliant autumn. We walked in the evening
for over a mile. It was all refreshing and exhilarating. Praise the
Lord for all of you who took time to extend and express your love and affection
on my birthday. I heard from so many from around the corner and around the
globe. I was deeply moved and pleasantly overwhelmed by the depth of your
love and affection. Thank you for your telephone calls, cards, and gifts.
In the late evening I had calls from our older grandchildren from
Boston, and I talked with them half an hour each. It was
sweet and beautiful. They are becoming quite the conversationalists.
Praise the Lord for each and every one of you. "I thank my God
at every remembrance of you." This is my desire - to honor Him
and serve and run the race well. Praise the Lord for your faithful
intercession on my behalf over these years. I am the recipient of His
grace and love.
From time to time I go back to the Book of
Esther, which is a strange book. It doesn't even mention the name of
God anywhere in the entire book. You find in it no miracles, no prophets
showing up to deliver God's word, there are no plagues sent from heaven.
There is not one prayer breathed anywhere in this book. As a result, it
has been largely ignored, sometimes altogether disregarded. If you go to
The Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, Esther is the one book from the entire Old
Testament that isn't found—not even a fragment—in the Dead Sea Scrolls in the
Qumran community. John Calvin didn't include Esther in his biblical
commentaries, and he only referenced it once in the Institutes. Yet, although God
may seem to be completely absent from the book, we are stunnned
and provoked by the powerful and memorable verse where Mordecai tells
Easther, "You've come to the kingdom for such a time as this, it's time
for you to stand up and to be counted and to make a decision."
The name "Esther" is a corruption of the name of a false deity.
She doesn't admit she's a Jew. She and Mordecai have grown so comfortable
in Persia that even though under the decree of Cyrus which permitted the Jews
to return back to their homeland, they don't go.
She never seems to pray. She joins the harem. She is so
enticing, alluring, and appealing.
We can relate to Esther's
imperfections and compromises. Sometimes we get to the place
where we have to trust God that he's going to use us in spite of our broken
past. As Scripture reveals, Esther was not of impeccable
character. Though she was a gorgeous young woman, she was not of the
character that she ought to have. She's not characterized as a woman of
prayer or of the Word. Although she was chosen to be the queen, her life
was, for want of a better word, messy. I've learned this after years
of living and pastoring that everybody's lives are messy. Praise the Lord
for His sovereign grace, power, and mercy over our messes and compromises.
The reality and the
truth are that we often don't live life well until our lives are
challenged, maybe even tormented. We are far less open to God when we
think we have it all together, when we think somehow we have accomplished,
achieved, or attained what we desire. But we need to trust
that God will use us, but not because of what we have done, not because of our
goodness. God uses us in spite of our broken past. Not
only that, we have to trust that he will use us in spite of our
imperfections.
Again in the book of Esther God is
not explicitly seen. He is not mentioned. There is no prayer to him—even
when Esther decides that she's going to do what she can to go to the king and
save her people. She tells Mordecai to tell all the Jews to fast,
although she does not hasten to add, "And pray"? God is
simply hidden, as though the author is intentionally keeping God obscured,
eclipsed, hiding in the shadows. Yet, just because we don't see
God in Esther does not mean he's not there. We need to
learn to trust that God is with us in spite of our dim vision.
Sometimes our vision will be dimmed by our own sinfulness, sometimes
by circumstances, sometimes by the pain and grief that envelop us .
But God does some of his best work in the shadows, hidden from view, obscured
by the dim vision of those whom he is dealing with.
For every Daniel who sees a clear vision
of the Son of Man, there must be a thousand Esthers who come stumbling,
staggering, reluctantly dragged into the will of God by desperation and a lack
of alternatives. I have often found myself in the same situation. I
have nothing else to do. There's nowhere else for me to go. The choice for me
is true, complete, and utter failure or potential failure but trusting in
God. Then I turn to him and I say, "Lord, I don't understand why
this stuff has happened, I don't understand how you are at work, I don't
understand why you've allowed this grief into my life. I don't know,
Lord, why you allowed me to make bad choices. I don't know any of that
but I know I have nowhere else to go." That's the God we
serve. He is the same God who has brought us through everything
in our lives—our failures, tragedies, grief, bad decisions, and sinful
choices. He has brought us to this moment so that we
may come to him in our imperfect place and with our broken past, so
that we can know that the King of Kings holds out not a golden scepter but
a bloody cross, and see that he is not hidden in the shadows but on his throne.
In Christ,
Brown
