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February 25, 2021“When I called, you answered me; you built up strength within me” Ps. 138.
Purim is the most lighthearted of the Jewish festivals, filled with a great banquet, sweets, drinking and even dressing up in costumes, sort of like Mardi Gras, Halloween and Easter rolled into one. Usually falling somewhere in late winter or early spring, it celebrates the occasion when Queen Esther saved her people from destruction by, first, admitting to her husband, Ahasuerus (Xerxes), King of Persia, her Jewish heritage and secondly, exposing the plan of his vizier, Haman, to kill all the Jews in Persia. She accomplished this by placing all her trust in God, whose help she sought with three days of fasting and intense prayer.
Through a significant coincidence this year the Jewish Festival of Purim falls on Thursday of First Week of Lent, the same day on which we read from the book of Esther. The reading offers us a portion of Esther’s prayer in which we experience some of her intense fear at having to approach the king. We may not pray to have our enemies perish, as Esther does, but we do rely on the history of God’s reputation of helping the defenseless as she does. With Queen Esther as a model, we use this Lent to increase our faith and trust in our gracious Creator to, “turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness.”
