Long range planning
Esther 4: Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this.
I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that Haman probably hated the Jews long before Mordecai gets under his skin by not bowing down to him. I think that when the old man at the gate doesn’t feed his ego Haman takes note of him. When he finds out that he’s a Jew it triggers his plan to do away with a race of people he already hates. And, clearly, Haman has been on the elevator upward in Xerxes’ kingdom for some time now. Haman is a schemer who willingly bypasses small gains if doing so fits in with his bigger plans. If these two guesses are correct, Mordecai’s words here are especially accurate. That is, he doesn’t think that God gave Esther her beauty and then engineered her being made queen as a “just in case” measure. He believes God has been aware of the circumstances of all this all along. With that in mind, the Lord began putting together a plan of his own and that plan is what brings Esther to the position she now holds. Up to now Mordecai and Esther have tried to react to the unexpected events of life as a people of God should. Now they realize that God is depending on their faithfulness to accomplish his own purposes. This passage reminds me that even when I can’t see the big picture that God can and when unexpected things happen (both good and bad) they might just be a part of something bigger than I know.
Take Away: Even when I don’t see the big picture I can trust in the One who can.