God's Glory Church

Last time we reflected on the essence of one of the most important holidays that we learn about from scripture – Purim. We talked about how the Lord has His own Purim for our country. And this is God’s truth for us: the trouble has not yet approached us, but the Almighty has already prepared a medicine against it.

But there is one “but” and I would like to talk to you about it today – what should we do while waiting for the onset of Purim? Do we need to continue to live as we lived before, or should something in our everyday life change? Do we have the right to simply relax and go with the flow of circumstances, because everything is predetermined and what the Lord wants to happen will happen? These are the questions I would like to answer today so that we can gain clear guidance from our Creator.

Haman conceived his anti-Jewish pogrom in the first month of the year (Nisan; approximately our April). At his libel, letters were sent to the provinces ordering the massacre of Jews to be carried out at the end of the year – in the 12th month (Adar, approximately our March). Haman was executed two months after the start of his anti-Jewish intrigue.

There were still nine months left before the appointed pogrom, and therefore, after Haman’s execution, it would have been enough to fulfill Esther’s legal request: “If it pleases the king and pleases me in his eyes, then let it be written that the letters according to Haman’s plan, written by him about the extermination of the Jews in all the king’s regions, should be returned” (Esther. 8:5).

This is where I would like to see the end of the Purim story. But, unfortunately, the royal decree on the murder of Jews could not be canceled and the king issued another decree: Jews could defend their lives and property, and in case of victory, they were allowed to take the property of the one who attacked them. And this is the essence of Purim – the story itself has not ended, but has only just begun.

The miracle is entrusted to us

In the entire book of Esther we do not see any obvious Divine miracles; but at the same time, all the “natural” events in it are so miraculously “adjusted” to one another, the salvation of the Jews occurs as a result of so many unlikely coincidences, that behind all this we feel the guiding will of Divine Providence. This situation is called a “hidden miracle” in Judaism, and the story ofPurimis a classic example of such a miracle. In this sense, the book of Esther is, as it were, the final book of most of the Old Testament: it describes the difference between the Biblical era, when “manifest miracles” occurred – the sea parted, fire came from the sky, God sent prophets and revealed himself to the Jews in the Temple – and the new era in the life of Israel, when obvious miracles ceased. This does not mean, however, that God has ceased to intervene in the lives of His people; It’s just that now His intervention comes through hidden miracles, i.e. coordination of unlikely, at a superficial glance, random events. It is thanks to such hidden miracles that the Jewish people – from Purim times to the present day – have been able to survive and persist despite extremely unfavorable environmental conditions.

There is, however, one place in the events ofPurimthat, it would seem, does not quite agree with the concept of a “God-thought-out script.” After all, if God made Esther a queen precisely in order to bring salvation through her, then why at the most critical moment, when Haman’s decree appeared, Esther was in disgrace with King Artaxerxes? If all history is a hidden miracle and the Divine control of accidents, then why did this case not favor Esther from the very beginning; why should she, on her own initiative, enter the palace of Artaxerxes and endanger both her life and her plan to save the people?

The answer is that, indeed, at this point in the history of the Jewish people, God stopped performing overt miracles. Everything seems to go naturally. But in order for this salvation to be realized, we must perform a miracle and act against the natural course of events. Performing a “miracle”, i.e. the disruption of the natural course of events is, in a sense, transferred to us

Any trials are sent to us by God

No matter how strange it may sound to us today, the heroes of the story of Esther act on natural impulses: greed, vanity, vindictiveness. And even Mordecai acts naturally: when he learns that his people are in danger, he dresses in burlap, sprinkles ashes on his head and demands that Esther do everything she can. And only Esther is in a situation where she must choose between her natural right to live and a completely unnatural act – to sacrifice her life to save the people.

In other words, the problem that Esther was faced with is also part of the Divine plan. A miracle not only does not happen automatically, but in order to help the miracle come true, we must act both at the limit of our strengths and capabilities, and “beyond them,” even putting our own lives in danger. The miracle is that our actions – contrary to natural expectations – actually lead to success

A divine miracle is always strictly measured, for its purpose is not simply “salvation,” but in the education of man, in teaching us to feel the Divine plans and help them come true. And this is precisely the purpose of the difficulties that God places before us today. This is true for us today: both the blessed Mordechai and the cursed Haman are sent to us by God to help us improve and advance.

Today we are waiting for God’s Purim for Ukraine, and our waiting should not be passive, but, as we see from the book of Esther, we must do everything in our power to make God’s miracle manifest today!

Pastor Alexander Koltukov.