Faith Among The Faithless: 10-Day Reading PlanSample

Esther’s story reveals something else: embracing weakness has a way of inoculating yourself against a love of power, or for that matter, a corrosive love of anything else. In the biblical text, it’s a little difficult to notice, because the story seems to just keep going. It seems as if Esther was pleading for her people on the same night she exposed Haman to the king, but she wasn’t. Esther 8:3 says, “Then Esther spoke again to the king. She fell at his feet and wept and pleaded with him to avert the evil plan of Haman the Agagite.” Once he was convinced to do so, the king’s scribes were summoned, and Mordecai wrote the second edict. Here, we’re given the date of these events—the twenty-third day of the month of Sivan, the third month of the year. The edict to kill the Jews was written in the month of Nisan, the first month of the year. Mordecai made his appeal to Esther at that time, and she agreed to risk her life three days after that. So, two months passed between Esther’s appeal (and Haman’s execution) and Esther’s second appeal.

These aren’t small details, though they’re easily missed. It means that Esther risked her life not once, but twice on behalf of God’s people.

It demonstrates a deep principle: Once you’ve embraced your mortality, once you’ve stared death in the face, it becomes very

easy to do so again. Once Esther found her place among God’s people and cried, “If I perish, I perish,” she was able to do it again two months later. . . . She had once and for all embraced her own death, and now she clung to nothing—not her place in the palace, not even her life.

Here lie the keys to resisting idolatry in all its forms: a love for others, and an embrace of mortality.

When we commit ourselves to a life of deep love and compassion, we’ll discover a light that far outshines the allure of idols.