Today's Meditation - Tuesday, September 29, 2020

 Today's Meditation

Read Esther 7:1-10

So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. ²On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” ³Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. ⁴For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.” ⁵Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?” ⁶Esther said, “A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!” Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.

⁷The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him. ⁸When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining; and the king said, “Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?” As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. ⁹Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, “Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Hang him on that.” ¹⁰So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.

    Queen Esther's cunning has paid off.  She has played into the king's weaknesses by using her skills as a gracious hostess, a magnificent strategist and even her position as a beautiful wife to advance her request.  And her request was for the king to save her people, not merely from slavery, but from being destroyed, killed, and annihilated by her enemy, the wicked Haman.

    The king is outraged at what he now considers a personal affront to his wife by Haman and has him hung on the very gallows that Haman had prepared for Mordecai.  Remember what I said every days ago about "pride goeth before the fall"?  Here, in boastfully thinking that he was above all others and the favorite of the king, was Haman's undoing.

    One of the essential questions in nearly all interviews are for the candidate to expound upon their strengths and weaknesses.  Some of those strengths have been fine tuned over the years of experience handling work-related circumstances, others come naturally through our God-given talents.  Our weaknesses should to be turned into strengths by being aware of them and finding ways of changing or manipulating our behaviors to offset their negativity.

    If an outsider were to evaluate Esther for the position of queen, you'd see mostly weakness.  To the king, her strength lay only in her beauty.  But there was more to Esther than her beauty.  She was smart, and she used her position as Queen to gain the confidence of the king.  She was then able to rid herself and her family of a prideful and boastful enemy and save her people.

    What strengths do you possess that maybe even you are unaware of?  What weaknesses can you change or manipulate to turn them into a strength?

Just a Closer Walk With Thee