{"id":5044,"date":"2023-09-28T19:00:05","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T00:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5044"},"modified":"2023-09-28T19:00:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T00:00:05","slug":"devotional-on-esther-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-esther-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Esther"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-A0WVot-WLWc\/XxMtS8LSxuI\/AAAAAAABFiI\/svZpoK4AGCAkeaP9g9r6qcGbFS2D2UkVQCPcBGAsYHg\/s1600\/IMG_20190727_154011.jpg\" width=\"1600\" height=\"926\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2019 &#8211; Gettysburg Battlefield, PA<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nAnd they all lived happily ever after<br \/>\nEsther 8: For Jews it was all sunshine and laughter.<br \/>\nAs I wrap up my devotional reading of the story of Esther I find a &#8220;happily ever after&#8221; kind of conclusion. The tables have been turned on the enemies of the Jews. Their enemies had expected to exterminate God&#8217;s people but the Jews were given permission to fight back and they\u2019ve done so with stunning success. The two most important people in Xerxes&#8217; kingdom are now Jews: Queen Esther and his first adviser, Mordecai. The Jews have become so popular that many are converting to their religion. These are good days indeed. Clearly, this is a mere snapshot of history, but it&#8217;s one worth remembering so the Jews create an annual holiday to commemorate these events. I think that\u2019s a pretty smart thing to do. We know that life isn&#8217;t always filled with happy endings. The very race of people we\u2019re talking about here has a history of way more than its share of loss and destruction. However, they know that it\u2019s good to remember special days of blessing. Frankly, good and bad constantly mix in our world. Even as we celebrate the birth of our Savior we comfort families who have lost loved ones, we make hospital visits, and we pray that for some very good people that the New Year will be better for them than was the old one. Remembering the good days brings balance and perspective to our lives. That doesn&#8217;t mean that we pretend all is well when it\u2019s not, but it does mean that we step back and see the whole picture of our lives rather than focusing only on our problems.<br \/>\nTake Away: Don\u2019t let the problems of life blind you to the blessings of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And they all lived happily ever after Esther 8: For Jews it was all sunshine and laughter. As I wrap up my devotional reading of the story of Esther I find a &#8220;happily ever after&#8221; kind of conclusion. The tables have been turned on the enemies of the Jews. Their enemies had expected to exterminate [&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":[106,123,167,866],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044"}],"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=5044"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14701,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044\/revisions\/14701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}