The Book of Esther is a great story and is unique in the biblical canon: God is not named even once in the entire book. He remains in the background (as is often true in life), working his plan, bringing salvation. The Book of Esther is a story of love, sex, and political intrigue. It is one of those adventures where the clock is winding down and the reader wonders whether salvation will arrive in time.

The story takes place during the time of Israel’s exile from the Promised Land. Esther’s parents had died and she had been adopted by an older male relative named Mordecai. They were living in Persia (modern-day Iran) during the Greek and Persian wars. Just before the king went off to the wars, he and his queen had a very public breakup. After he came back (from disastrous defeat), he looked for a woman to take the queen’s place and found Esther in a 5^th century B.C. version of The Bachelorette.

Esther entered the contest (not that she had much choice in the matter), and she won. But on her adopted dad’s advice, she did not disclose her ethnicity. She was a Jew, and at the time there was a good deal of anti-Semitic feeling present in the country and even in the king’s court. The hatred of Jews was embodied in one of the King’s chief counselors, a man named Haman. Haman actually knew Mordecai (Esther’s adopted father) and hated him, but he did not know (only a very small number of people did) of Mordecai’s relationship to the new queen.

So, here’s the picture. Esther is the Jewish wife of the petulant King Xerxes, whose chief counselor Haman is a thorough-going anti-Semite. But Haman does not know that Esther is a Jew – it never occurred to him to question her ethnicity. Haman takes advantage of the anti-Jewish sentiment in the country to launch a Himmler-like Final Solution to the problem of the Jews, every bit as horrific as that of the Nazis. He works on this plan in Susa (a Persian counterpart to Camp David, the summer capital for the Persian Empire), and he gets the king to sign off on it. He then sets a date for the implementation of this final solution, which will mean death and destruction to the empire’s Jewish community.

Mordecai obtains a copy of the edict, gathers other Jews, and they fast, cry, and wail right at the Palace gates. (This would be like staging a protest on Pennsylvania Ave.) When one of the few people who knows about the connection between Esther and Mordecai tells her (shut away in the queen’s quarters in the palace harem) that her relative is dressed in sackcloth and making a scene on the street in front of the palace, she gets scared. She sends a trusted servant to him with a change of clothing. Implication: “I don’t know what you’re doing but stop it!”) Mordecai refuses.

Now to understand why things go the way they do, you need to realize that Mordecai and Esther have not spoken to one another for a long time. They can’t afford to be seen together; their relationship is a great secret. And besides that, the queen and her retinue are pretty much locked away in their luxurious quarters all the time (partly to avoid the riffraff but also to appease the king). Esther only sees other people at affairs of state. She really doesn’t know what’s going on. She doesn’t know her people are in danger of extermination. She is completely in the dark.

And Mordecai doesn’t know how much Esther knows. He imagines that she’s heard all about what’s going on and is doing nothing. So, when she sends him a change of clothes, he can only guess what she’s thinking: She wants him to remain inconspicuous, so as to avoid trouble. But that’s not what he has in mind. He is not planning to go softly into that dark night! So, through the rest of the story, keep in mind that Queen Esther and her adopted dad Mordecai have not spoken in ages, they cannot meet in person and have to conduct all their correspondence through a third person.

When Mordecai sends word to Esther concerning Haman’s plan, lots of things run through her mind. If she goes to the king, she’s going to have to reveal her ethnicity. She’s going to have to come out of the Semitic closet. What if he rejects her? When he was disappointed with his last wife, things did not go well for her. Besides that, not even the queen could enter the king’s presence unbidden. If someone presumed to go to the king without first being summoned, that person would be beheaded. That was the punishment—unless the king overruled. And who knew if he would overrule? He hadn’t called for her in a month. Maybe he was already tired of her. Maybe he was angry with her. She didn’t know.

Nevertheless, Mordecai urges her to go to the king. He frames the situation this way: You (Esther) have a decision to make. Maybe you can save your own neck, maybe not. That’s not the point. And saving everyone else is not the point either, because whether you stand up or not, God will be true to his covenant. Someone will arise to bring relief and deliverance to the Jews. God has already chosen that. You’re not making a decision about how things will turn out. We don’t get to make those kinds of decisions – they belong to God. Your decision is this: to do the thing God wants you to do or not to do it. Perhaps God brought you to this place for just this time. This is your opportunity to say yes to God. But it’s also your opportunity to say no. So, what’s it going to be?

It was decision time. Some people are so intimidated at the thought of making a wrong decision, they make no decision. (I’m an honorary member of that group.) But there is a time for making decisions. The speech that Shakespeare gives Brutus in Julius Caesar is full of wisdom, in spite of the circumstances in which it is spoken: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” For Esther the tide was high; the time was now. A decision needed to be made. And she made it.

These are her memorable words, as she prepares to break the royal law – an act of civil disobedience – and risk her life for a purpose greater than herself: “I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).

When Esther finally saw clearly what was going on (that’s insight), she made a decision (“I will go to the king, and if I perish, I perish”). But she did not perish, and so the rest of the story is about Esther implementing her decision, putting it into action.

But the truth is, she could have perished. Making right decisions does not guarantee desired outcomes. Our decision must never be to have a certain outcome, but to take a certain action – one that is in line with our insights about God, ourselves, and others. Outcomes are beyond our control, but actions are not. Outcomes are in God’s sphere of influence; actions are in ours, so we need to make ourselves responsible for our actions while leaving responsibility for outcomes to God.

That’s just the opposite of the way most people live. They make themselves responsible for outcomes, which leaves them susceptible to constant worry. They don’t make themselves responsible for actions, which leaves them ineffective and blaming others for failure. We are not responsible for how things turn out. We are responsible for what we do (or fail to do).

Spiritual growth occurs at the nexus of insight, decision, and implementation. In the next article, we will think about how to go about implementing our decisions.