Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to confront it with God’s help and overcome it.
Haman’s time bomb had been triggered. “The couriers went out, hastened by the king’s command; and the decree was proclaimed in Shushan.” Having accomplished what they thought was a good day’s work, “the king and Haman sat down to drink” (Est 3:15). “But,” we read, “the city of Shushan was perplexed.” And so they should be. If this Agagite, a megalomaniac, was piloting the ship of state, and if the emperor could capriciously consign a people to destruction without even knowing their name, no one was safe. Mordecai, a man with an ear for news, soon “learned all that had happened, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes” (4:1). But if the king and Haman were going to do things under wraps in the palace, Mordecai would bring it into the light. He “went out into the midst of the city,” and there he “cried out with a loud and bitter cry.” He went as far as he dared, right to “the front of the king’s gate” (v 2). But he wasn’t the only one distressed. Wherever the news arrived, anguish was right behind. Esther, oblivious to the impending danger, only heard that Mordecai was outside the gate in sackcloth. She sent him replacement clothes, but he refused them. So she inquired “to learn what and why this was” (v 5). She sent “Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs” to talk to Mordecai and report back. The news was shocking, but Mordecai wanted her to implore the king. What, and lose her head? You couldn’t just walk into the throne room like that. Mordecai told her she was set to lose it anyway; better to die trying than not to try and die anyway. Although in faith he thought “deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place” (v 14) if she didn’t help, he wondered if she had “come to the kingdom for such a time as this.”