PROVIDENCE, NOT PROFIT February 26, 2020 | Esther 9:5–10 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue For as long as there has been war, plunder has been a part of it. For centuries, invading nations have stolen the food, resources, and the territories of those they conquer. But back in Genesis 14—when Abram rescued the goods and people […]
WITH CONFIDENCE February 25, 2020 | Esther 9:1–4 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Imagine going into any sort of challenge—a basketball game, a big exam, a legal dispute—knowing with 100 percent certainty that you were going to come out on top. What confidence you would carry! That is how the Jewish people could now approach the […]
HOLY WAR? February 24, 2020 | Esther 8:9–17 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue Just War Theory is a set of criteria that governments, philosophers, and theologians use to determine if war is justifiable. According to this theory, war is always horrible but not always the worst way forward. Some commonly agreed-upon reasons for a “just war” […]
February 23, 2020 | Esther 8:1–8 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue A “reversal of fortune” happens in a story when a character’s circumstance changes so dramatically it becomes the exact opposite of what it had been. The book of Esther is full of these examples, and today we find a few more. For if, while we […]
A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE February 22, 2020 | Esther 7:5–10 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue The idiom “stuck between a rock and a hard place” can be traced back to Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, in which Odysseus must pass between Scylla, a cliff-dwelling monster (the rock), and Charybdis, a treacherous whirlpool (the hard place). […]
FULL IDENTITY REVEALED February 21, 2020 | Esther 7:1–4 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue American comic heroes often have a “secret identity.” The true nature of the superhero is known by the reader, but it is carefully concealed from the antagonist and other characters in the story. Only on a rare and significant occasion is their […]
POETIC JUSTICE February 20, 2020 | Esther 6:10–14 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue In the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble is the cruel manager of the workhouse where Oliver is raised. Mr. Bumble marries Mrs. Corney, the matron of the establishment, who is just as tyrannical. But, in a twist of fate, the Bumbles […]
February 19, 2020 | Esther 6:4–9 This Month’s Issue According to a recent study, fame is now the number one goal of preteens. “Being famous” catapulted from sixteenth place all the way to first, leap-frogging over long-standing life goals such as having a family, working a good job, or living in community. The researchers connect […]
A SEEMINGLY ORDINARY EXPERIENCE February 18, 2020 | Esther 6:1–3 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue I met my husband in the cafeteria at Moody Bible Institute one September afternoon in 1998. I was a new faculty member. He was a new graduate student. That day, I made the seemingly ordinary decision to eat lunch in a […]
HOW PRIDE BLINDS February 17, 2020 | Esther 5:9b–14 DEVOTIONS This Month’s Issue If you were to name the “Top Ten Egotists of All Time,” whom would you include? One such list features Billy the Kid, one of the most lethal men in the Wild West, and John Wilkes Booth, the stage actor who shot […]