Rays of Hope ~ Tim Stockton
Exactly Where I Need To Be
Often we may wonder why we are where we are. Why were we born in the town, state, or country that we were? Or maybe if we have moved to a new location why did we end up where we are? We may know a specific reason like we moved to take a job or be closer to a certain person. We may have moved away to get a new start or maybe we are on the run from something or someone. Things can be looked at from many perspectives, but it seems the most positive is to have the belief that wherever we are at this point in our life we are at an exact place where God can use us.
If you find yourself in bad circumstances this doesn’t mean this is where God wants you to be or to stay, but through the experience He can teach you something through it. We may be in a great place where nothing seems to be going wrong, all is looking up and successful and it may be a place we need to be at the moment to teach us something for when we are at the opposite end of that spectrum.
There had been a girl who was a double orphan after the death of each of her parents and taken in by a close relative. Many of her people had been taken as slaves and the place they worshiped had been destroyed. Just try to imagine what this girl is thinking when it comes to where she belongs. Her home along with her parents are gone and moved in with a relative. She could have had thoughts of do they really want me? Some of her people had become slaves. What if the arrangement with her relative doesn’t work out, will he want to sell her into slavery?
Things begin to happen by what some may say is a hidden hand guiding the circumstances to get her to the place she needs to be for a greater purpose than she has ever imagined. Starting out as a fair maiden who was orphaned to becoming Esther Queen of Persia. As one can read in the Old Testament named after her in chapter 4:14 we can read, “for such a time as this.”
Through the pain, heartache, losses, uncertainties of her past led her to a place of great power in order to help her people not be annihilated. She recognized that before this could be accomplished that she and her people had to be in a repentant state. She fasted and prayed and encouraged the people to do the same as she was willing to risk her very life to approach the King to save the Jewish people from being destroyed as was the plan to be carried out. Sometimes we may be placed in the presence of our enemies in order to stand firm and see the salvation of those whose very lives hang in the balance.
2/5/23
Rays of Hope 