{"id":5031,"date":"2023-09-22T17:20:17","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T22:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5031"},"modified":"2023-09-22T17:20:17","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T22:20:17","slug":"devotional-on-esther-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-esther-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Esther"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-sHXt1idYxBg\/XwtoGsr8PiI\/AAAAAAABFe4\/CSgmZqNne3sGaTLhUG0SmtTA3nGXEc3UACPcBGAsYHg\/s1600\/IMG_20190608_114652.jpg\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2019 &#8211; Yorktown, VA<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nResistance is futile<br \/>\nEsther 3: There is an odd set of people scattered through the provinces of your kingdom who don&#8217;t fit in.<br \/>\nOn the TV show &#8220;Star Trek the Next Generation&#8221; Captain Picard&#8217;s big enemy is the Borg. This mechanical-biological menace goes around &#8220;assimilating&#8221; people. Once the poor person is captured, they are melted into the Borg and lose their self-identity. When Jerusalem falls its citizens are relocated to various places in the Babylon Empire in an attempt to assimilate them. Conquered people are expected to lose their self-identity and simply see themselves as part of that vast kingdom. However, the Jewish people were called by God Almighty to be a &#8220;chosen people&#8221; centuries earlier. Obviously, there were many failures, still they resisted assimilation in Egypt and again when they moved into the Promised Land. Now, they insist on seeing themselves as, not just part of Xerxes kingdom, but as a people in exile. Haman is a bad guy who wants revenge on Mordecai by eliminating both him and his entire race, but he\u2019s right when he says they &#8220;don&#8217;t fit in.&#8221; Okay, from Star Trek to Babylon to today&#8230;we too are a called out people. We\u2019re the Church and we\u2019re called to be in the world but not of it. As the fictional Picard resists being assimilated and as the historical Jews resisted, so are we to resist. We interact with our culture, influence it, and confront it &#8212; but as God&#8217;s people we must never be assimilated by it.<br \/>\nTake Away: Resistance is not futile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Resistance is futile Esther 3: There is an odd set of people scattered through the provinces of your kingdom who don&#8217;t fit in. On the TV show &#8220;Star Trek the Next Generation&#8221; Captain Picard&#8217;s big enemy is the Borg. This mechanical-biological menace goes around &#8220;assimilating&#8221; people. Once the poor person is captured, they are melted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1492,7],"tags":[123,1072],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5031"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5031"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14688,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5031\/revisions\/14688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}