The Girl-Queen, the Captive Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Esther (4:1-10)

Esther is notorious for being the only book in the Bible (or one of only two books, depending on how you translate Song of Solomon 8:6) that doesn't ever explicitly mention God. Anywhere. Like Godot in Samuel Beckett's play, God is a hidden character in this drama (although, unlike Godot, there is no hint of absurdity in his hiddenness).

Which is why Esther 4:3 really strikes me.

When the Jewish people hear about King Ahasuerus' decree, it says, "there was great mourning among them, with fasting, and weeping and wailing, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes." What's notably absent in this long list is any explicit reference to prayer. I used to see this critically, and moralistically, a sort of indictment against the people: when things were at their worst, they forgot to pray.

I suggested that reading to a friend a while back, and he said: "Well, what's fasting except praying with our whole body?" And that sort of re-framed things for me (Thanks, Oliver). True: nowhere in Esther does it ever say that the people knelt at their bedside and said some perfunctory "Now I lay me down to sleep." Rather, they threw themselves on God so completely, mind and body, heart and soul, flesh and blood, that the mere word "prayer" wasn't worthy of the heart-wrenching communion they were having with their Maker.

Could it be that there is a kind of prayer that "out-prays" prayer (so to speak)? That some encounters with God can be so raw, so naked, so visceral, even, that you'd hardly even think to call it "prayer"? Not because you're not praying, but because prayer (in the now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep sense) isn't necessary and couldn't express what's going on in you if it were.

I think so.

But I also think that North American Christians are barely Padawan Learners when it comes to this kind of sitting in God's presence: prayer that involves our whole being so completely that you wouldn't even think to call it prayer.

What if we took a cue from Esther's people, and exchanged a literal meal for the feast of spending an hour in God's presence, once in a while; or actually wore our prayers outwardly in the clothing we choose (or didn't choose), or simply poured out wordlessly to God the most tremulous things going on in our hearts?

We wouldn't be praying, then; because we wouldn’t need to.