Day-to-Day Faithfulness

Over the past few mornings, my Bible readings have been in the book of Esther. A familiar story to me, and probably to you. But just to recap the story, Esther is a young woman being raised by her cousin, Mordecai, because her parents had died. They are Jewish exiles living in the capital city of Susa. The king is looking for a new queen, so he essentially holds a beauty pageant to pick the next queen. Esther is among the group of young women chosen to be brought before the king, and she eventually wins the kings favor and becomes the queen. Then the king’s second-in-command, Haman, writes an edict to destroy the Jewish people throughout the kingdom, not knowing that Esther was a Jew. In the famous verse (4:14) Mordecai suggests to Esther that God has placed her in this position as queen to save her people. At the risk of her life, Esther makes it known to the king that she is a Jew and asks that her people be spared from the edict. Esther finds favor with the king, and she is not killed and the Jewish people are spared.
God’s providence is a key factor in the story of Esther. If you read it, you can see His hand orchestrating the whole story to bring His people out from under the oppression they were facing. But what really caught my attention was in the details that I had missed in my past readings of the story. In chapter 2 verse 16, it says that King Ahasuerus made Esther the queen in the seventh year of his reign. Then chapter 3 verse 7 tells us that the plot to eliminate the Jewish people began in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus’s reign. 5 years had passed since Esther was made queen. It’s easy to lose sight of timelines in the Bible when we are able to read a story in one sitting, especially if it is a familiar story. The same is true for the story of Joseph. Twenty eventful years pass in just a couple pages of our Bible. The book of Daniel is spread out over 80 years of Daniel’s life, but we rarely consider how much time passes between each of the major events in his life.
We tend to glamorize the major events in these stories, and in some ways we should. They demonstrate extreme faithfulness in the face of extreme risk. We should want to be willing to do the same things. But when we emphasize and glamorize the major events, we miss the point. Each one of these people, and many others in the Bible, didn’t just wake up one day ready to risk their lives for God. They were faithful in their day-to-day relationship with God and grew in their maturity and faithfulness to the point that they were willing to risk their lives because they had grown in their love for Him and had seen His faithfulness to them over the years.
It is naïve of us to think that we would be willing to stand up for our faith in the face of persecution if we are unwilling to do it in the day-to-day events of life. If we are unwilling to “stand up” to our schedules in order to spend time with the Lord and His people, if we are unwilling to “stand up” to the culture about how to spend our money or what movies to watch or artists to listen to, then we won’t do it when faced with a major circumstances. It’s not as glamorous, but it’s the day-to-day faithfulness that demonstrates true love for God and prepares us for whatever major test that might come. I pray that the Spirit would help us to be faithful in the daily things, so that we can be ready for what the future might bring.

-Kendall Harris