When God Calls the Shots
Esther 7:3–10
3 Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor with the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my request, I ask that my life and the lives of my people will be spared. 4 For my people and I have been sold to those who would kill, slaughter, and annihilate us. If we had merely been sold as slaves, I could remain quiet, for that would be too trivial a matter to warrant disturbing the king.”
5 “Who would do such a thing?” King Xerxes demanded. “Who would be so presumptuous as to touch you?”
6 Esther replied, “This wicked Haman is our adversary and our enemy.” Haman grew pale with fright before the king and queen. 7 Then the king jumped to his feet in a rage and went out into the palace garden.
Haman, however, stayed behind to plead for his life with Queen Esther, for he knew that the king intended to kill him. 8 In despair he fell on the couch where Queen Esther was reclining, just as the king was returning from the palace garden.
The king exclaimed, “Will he even assault the queen right here in the palace, before my very eyes?” And as soon as the king spoke, his attendants covered Haman’s face, signaling his doom.
9 Then Harbona, one of the king’s eunuchs, said, “Haman has set up a sharpened pole that stands seventy-five feet* tall in his own courtyard. He intended to use it to impale Mordecai, the man who saved the king from assassination.”
“Then impale Haman on it!” the king ordered. 10 So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.
The plot thickens as the excitement builds. Esther plans a banquet for the king and Haman. Blinded by his own conceit, Haman thinks the queen wants to honor him. But when the king asks Esther what request she might have that he can grant, she says, “I want both of you to come to another banquet tomorrow. Then I will tell you what I want.”
Haman was thrilled! The queen was going to honor him twice with a feast in the presence of King Ahasuerus. She must really think I’m something, he thought.
On the way back home, he saw Mordecai, that Jew who would not give him the homage and deference he felt he had coming. Haman was infuriated at the sight of his nemesis.
You see, when God calls the shots, nobody can stop the action! The most powerful man in the land next to the king gets his hands tied and his mouth silenced. God and God alone can do such things.
When I come to this book that never mentions God, I see Him all the more profoundly and eloquently portrayed throughout it. It’s there in invisible ink. Just like life. I’ve never seen skywriting that says, “I’m here, Chuck. You can count on Me.” I’ve never heard an audible voice in the middle of the night reassuring me, “I’m here, My son.” But by faith I see Him, and inaudibly I hear Him on a regular basis, reading Him written in the events of my life—whether it be the crushing blows that drive me to my knees or the joyous triumphs that send my heart winging. When I pause long enough to look back, I realize it is the unsearchable mind, the unfathomable will, the sovereign control, the irresistible providence of God at work, because He, though invisible, remains invincible.
Are you letting God call the shots in your life?
When I pause and look back, I can see the irresistible, invincible God at work.
— Charles R. Swindoll
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