Day 14-Nehemiah2-13, Esther1-10, Job1-26

Wandering Disciple

Three distinctly different books today.

Nehemiah has always impressed me. He was pretty high ranking in the king's service. He was the cup bearer. If anything was poisoned, he was going to die first. But at the same time, he had to be someone the king actually liked, otherwise, would you ever want to constantly drink the backwash of someone you hated? Something to think about. So when Nehemiah was looking sad in front of the king's face, for the first time in his entire career, it made the king ask him why.

God's grace was on Nehemiah. King Artaxerxes decided to not only give Nehemiah permission to rebuild the walls and the temple of his hometown, he also agreed to fund it. They had lots of enemies and plots to ruin the rebuilding, but the scene my entire life has always amused me when the verses describe the builders working with one hand, and grasping a sword in the other, and never taking their clothes off, even sleeping in them, ready to defend at all times.

Esther. A pretty neat orphan-to-Queen dream of a life. What little girl in the world wouldn't wish for the same thing? And she also gets to save her entire race throughout her husband's kingdom. Of course, the most quoted verse in the entire book, it's beautiful, and never gets old: "For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance shall arise for the Jews from elsewhere, but you and your father's house will die. Who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this and for this very occasion?.... Go, gather together all the Jews that are present...and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I also and my maids will fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law; if I perish, I perish."

Job. Good night! This book has always broken my heart. The utterly confounding thing is that God blatantly offered and volunteered Job's livelihood, body, health, children's lives, and everything he ever loved to be utterly destroyed by satan BECAUSE he was faithful and righteous before God. The only thing Job ever wants is to know why. But he doesn't get an answer. In some way, it's kind of a magnificent explanation for why life is so hard sometimes, even if we have been running after God with all our heart. I can so relate with so many of the gut-wrenching things he says, and having his character constantly and viciously attacked by people who pretended to love him, even after he had done nothing wrong. After I found my mum dead, I spent a long time wanting to die, but for some reason God wouldn't let me. And I was nowhere near as righteous as Job.