Dear Family at Christ Community,

     On Sunday, we will be in Esther 4 where the distress born of Haman’s murderous edict reaches the Queen. This chapter progresses God’s call at the end of Chapter 2 to wait in faithful obedience on His kind providences. God’s people now wait with a guillotine literally hanging over their heads. The level of distress calls for the use of fasting, prayer, and lament to remain faithful and entreat God’s intervention. They must trust the past displays and present evidence of God’s deliverance of His people from what seems certain annihilation. David G. Firth proves helpful for understanding this dynamic in The Message of Esther: God Present But Unseen:

We only recognize the working of providence by looking back, but we have to commit ourselves to God’s providence and live our lives going forward.

     We, too, find ourselves in seasons of distress as God’s people with threats of impending doom that span from the microbial Grim Reaper to ecological collapse into a haunted wasteland to rumors of uncivil war to threats of nuclear destruction. The Lord’s Table helps us to look back to God’s grand deliverance of His people from the two most destructive forces the world has ever and will ever know: sin and death for they affect eternity, not just now. The cross and the empty grave declare us alive eternally in union with Jesus alone by God’s grace alone through faith alone.

     The elements of given bread and lavish cup nourish us to be able to look forward and commit to God’s providence and live faithfully into what He has yet to reveal in our redemptive stories. We participate in this means of grace with a hope founded on and grounded in Christ’s finished work for eternity. We go on using all the means of grace to help us remain faithful in times of feasting and in times of famine.

     Prepare to come to the Lord’s Table this Sunday by looking back on how God has been faithful and good in your life and the lives of others in your spheres of influence. Come looking to be nourished to go on in a more substantive hope for God’s glory, your joy, and the life of the world!

In Christ,
Cameron