Sometimes we have this naïve assumption that following God is going to lead to a comfortable and easy life. After all, if God is for us, shouldn’t that mean things will always go well? But it doesn’t take much reading in the Bible to realize that’s simply not true. Look at Jesus and how much He suffered—or Paul, or Abraham, or David, or Naomi, or Esther—none of whom avoided suffering.
Life in this broken and sin-cursed world is full of very hard things. God‘s people don’t get a pass. But what makes all the difference is the fact that God is with us in the midst of all the trials we face, and He is working in all things redemptively for our good and His glory (Romans 8:28). That means there is nothing which can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Romans 8:39).
When God’s people in the Old Testament were going through the sufferings of life in exile, many of them grew weary and lost confidence in God. It’s hard to follow God when you live in the valley of the shadow of death. The temptation is to start living like an orphan who has to fend for themselves, forgetting that you have a good Father who is with you always even in the hardest of places. Today in the book of Esther, we’re going to see how the gathering storm clouds actually serve to draw God‘s wandering people back to Him in desperation. After all, we only discover God is all we truly need when He is all we truly have. And even in the valley of the shadow of death, we are loved, more than we know.
