If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this. ~Esther 4:14
As a teenager, I played a man’s instrument, the trumpet, in the marching band. I sat in the third chair, next to Mary Kay Warren and Mary Lee Babb. They were good players, and they were girls. Oh, the things we learned as kids about how accomplished girls could be at all kinds of things.
Throughout the fall, our band practiced for home football games. Arthur Sweet, the director, would first teach us the music, and then he would show us on the blackboard the various formations we would make—the shape of a banjo for “Swanee River” or the Empire State Building for the Broadway medley. Then we’d go to the football field and practice. Over and over we’d go through the steps, making sure our banjo really looked like a banjo to the crowd, and making sure we didn’t knock one another down in our transitions from the banjo to the next formation.
Precision and good timing were Mr. Sweet’s plan, and so we practiced until we were ready. The problem for those of us in the band was that, standing on the field, without perspective, we couldn’t tell a banjo from a duck. So Mr. Sweet would stand on a high platform with a bullhorn, directing our every move. For him, “almost” wasn’t good enough. It had to be perfect.
Before the beginning of time, God knew that King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) would be a volatile man. God knew that because Xerxes’s first wife would disobey him, he would throw her out of the palace. Years before this, God had put a beautiful little orphan girl in Mordecai’s way, and because of his compassion, he gave her a home. Then God gave this same young woman, Esther, favor in Xerxes’s eyes, and she was made queen. Talk about a turn of events—a Jewish girl becomes queen of Persia? But this was part of God’s wonderful plan.
God also knew that Xerxes would take the advice of his evil adviser, Haman, and order the destruction of every Jew. What if Esther hadn’t been there? But she was. And what if Xerxes had not listened to her plea for mercy for her people? But he did. Precision and timing are God’s great forte. Mr. Sweet wasn’t the only one.
How often have you and I looked at our circumstances and wondered what was going on? What is God up to? we have brooded. Unfortunately, we’re on the field, and we really can’t tell a banjo from a duck. But God, from His vantage point, sees the whole picture. With flawless perfection, His ways are unfolding one step at a time. So as mere mortals—third chair trumpet players at best—our great challenge is to trust Him.
God’s timing is perfect. No one knew this better than Queen Esther. The good news is that we can take this truth for ourselves. Because He’s in a place high above us, we can trust Him to write our story and the stories of those we love.