She Stands

  "Lord, I want to love as you do."      Just shy of thirty years ago, I recall a time when I was sitting on the back pew alone in church, I whispered those words to the Lord. I had been watching the doors open as others came in for Sunday night service and through my people watching silence, I began to notice the slumped shoulders of many as though the world was sitting on top of them. The slow-moving steps, unsure were to sit or the facial expressions asking if they should even stay. The plastic smiles hiding the hurt buried deep within, and the lonely eyes that scanned the sanctuary in hopes someone would welcome them in.  With every deep breath I took I could feel a sledgehammer of affliction hitting its mark.  I looked down, in the hopes no one noticed my eyes gazing throughout the church, at my shaking clasped hands and realized I am no different.  I too had felt the world was sitting on my shoulders that night.  My feet were uncer...

  The book of Esther is one of my favorites.  A young, beautiful Jewish girl living in the Persian Empire who lost her parents at a tender age was in the care of her kinsman, Mordecai. I do not believe he ever once entertained the notion the child he took as his own would come to live in the palace of Shushan as queen. Nor save their people.   But. God.   Esther 4 verse 14 .......Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?   Esther's story is one of great faith and redemption. Her trust in God was greater than the circumstances that surrounded her.   There are seasons we find ourselves in not quite knowing how it is we came to such a place. Over the last several years I have questioned the station of my life. I had believed it to be one way and yet it's been something totally different. I often think how Esther was taken from all that she knew and placed in a life that was foreign to her. We...