The Girl-Queen, the Captive-Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Esther (2:21-23)

After a somewhat heavy reflection in my last post on Esther, today I’m thinking about random acts of kindness. In an almost throw-away line, The Book of Esther mentions how Mordecai found out about a conspiracy to kill King Ahasuerus and warned him through Queen Esther, an event which gets recorded in King's Record Book. It only gets this passing, three verse nod, but if we've read Esther before, we already know that this small, seemingly insignificant act of righteousness is going to yield a harvest of salvation down the road.

Like a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon, it will create a typhoon of upset for the enemies of God's people, before the story's done. It's doubly remarkable, too, because Ahasuerus just finished abducting Mordecai's cousin and adopted daughter, forcing her into his harem. If anyone had reason to wish the King dead, it was Mordecai, and yet he acts to save him.

It got me thinking about the random times I've "done the right thing" in small ways that maybe even went against the grain of my human nature. It got me wondering, too, how God might use those small, insignificant gestures in his big plan to show the world his salvation. Those two strangers I helped to get home that freezing winter night some ten years back, when they showed up on my doorstep, stranded, at 2 am ... will they turn around and topple a Haman when no one expects it? That troubled student I taught so many years ago, the one I told I was going to be praying for him, and I'm still doing my best, some ten years later, to keep my promise... will he reverse a genocidal plot one day? God knows. But the Book of Esther seems to think that God works powerfully (if hiddenly) in these small, daily, apparently insignificant acts of “doing right by your neighbour,” even if we never know how they fit into his big plan.

This might seem a bit of let down, what with all my talk last time about overthrowing the dehumanizing powers and the insidious principalities like so many beheaded Goliaths; but maybe that’s the point. When God is in it, the smallest act of kindness can overthrow the worst of evils. Goliath was, after all, brought down by a sling-shot.

At the very least, it’s got me re-thinking that place where Jesus said, “Whoever is unfaithful in the small things will be unfaithful in the big things.” Maybe it’s because being faithful in the small things is being faithful in the big.