Megillah

oh, Beth Moore. This week has marked the beginning of the sister chiclet's journey through Esther. It could not be a more fitting time for me to journey back to this blog. I'm struggling with some things. And it is not a new desire of mine to want to have things figured out before I come to this forum with my thoughts. Figured out? Right. Like King Xerxes and his most wise nobles (Esther 1:16)? Like Todd and Angie Smith? Like Paul? Like Zora Neale Hurston? Friends, I'm not going to have "it" figured out any time soon. Neither did these people, nor should they have been expected to.

 There is a whole Megillah of life to live and learn from. At no point will the good, the bad, the hardship, the joy, the tragedy, the love, and the sadness end this side of death. It's a lofty realization. Sometimes one that makes me want to know the answer even more. What would happen if in my quest to have some answers to write here, I more fervently sought to learn his promises. He doesn't always give answers. Sometimes, as was the case in Esther, He steps back. God is not once mentioned in the book of Esther. In these times all we have are the promises He has made. They are relevant. His promises apply. I do my best every day to reconcile them with the information I am gaining about this troubled world. And the more I try the more I realize, yet again, that I will not get it all figured out. I talk a lot about how frustrating this realization is for me. I want it to be humbling. As I study economics and society and racism and sexism and death and culture and ask questions about these subjects and the system they occur in and are fostered by, I am challenged. I'm told to write papers and have answers, so I come up with them as best I can (or as best as the teacher wants to hear). I am becoming better studied, better read with the seeming goal of becoming a better me. But as I study the world and find out more about its problems I notice that the last thing people need is someone to say they're better. The last thing people need is a self-serving someone. Yet college is like the ultimate example of self-service. Sure there are new ways and opportunities to reach out, but the investment is in yourself. And I've got to say, I struggle with investing in something so imperfect and un-figured out as me. 

God's thoughts? That's what I'm trying to discern right now. Because He offers the example of Esther (in Hebrew, the Megillah, "the Scroll, par excellence"). Beth Moore writes, "there on the sacred pages of Esther God overtook a human hand and scripted a young woman's story into His own." She also says that scripture cannot come without effect to the receptive soul. I am so ready to receive! I desire nothing more than to be effected by the pages of Esther in a way that would inspire me to let Him script my own. 

Life feels so ordinary right now. Nothing real interesting to fill people in on, or really take note of myself. Esther is THE book to speak to this mindset. It follows the story of a young woman and a nation where God works not through miraculous intervention, but through ordinary events. I'm ordinary. I feel the mundane and the trivial with the best of them. But I am promised the providence of God. A God who chooses to reveal himself best in a book that doesn't even mention Him. There's humility.