My daughter is beautiful. I know that everyone thinks that their kid is perfection, but I still can't believe that I birthed such a beautiful creature. When we're out running errands strangers will come up and comment about what a pretty girl she is and my child eats it up. She's a friendly toddler who loves attention and gains it easily with her happy demeanor, constant singing, blue eyes, and soft, straw-colored curls. I worry her features, though. I worry because my daughter is also smart. She's inquisitive and playful. She loves the outdoors and petting kittens and playing in the dirt and tweeting with the birds. I love watching her personality develop and wonder who she's going to be and what she'll end up wanting to do with her life. The part that worries me is, for all the amazing things she is, the average person just sees her beauty and I don't want her appearance to be how she defines herself.
Which brings us to the second chapter of Esther.
After Xerxes banished (or executed) Vashti he presumably sobered up and remembered what had happened. His advisors decided the that the best thing to help ease Xerxes's mind was to fill his harem with pretty young things and if he found one that he liked he could marry her and make her queen. So commissioners were sent to collect the pretty virgins in the kingdom.
I can't imagine what I would feel as a parent; having someone decide that my daughter is pretty and just be able to take her away from me and put her in a harem to become a concubine might break me. I would want to hide my daughter away, and I often wonder if parents did hide their daughters. Telling their teen girls not to leave the house, not to answer the door, to keep their heads down when they did have to go out; would make perfect sense to me. I don't know how long this gathering of girls took place, but girls were taken from their families and sent to the King's harem. One of these girls was Esther.
Esther was an orphan who was adopted by her cousin, Mordecai. Esther was beautiful and smart. Esther was 14.
So here is the 14 year-old orphaned Jewish exile being taken off to be trained as a concubine. She stayed in the harem for 12 months receiving training and beauty treatments. It is there that she begins to gain the favor of those around her. She seems to take the advice of those she trusts very seriously and this works for her. Her adoptive father tells her not to reveal her nationality and she doesn't. The head eunuch of the harem, Hegai, suggests what she should take with her when she goes to the king for the first time and she follows his advise. This worked well for her because she ends up pleasing Xerxes and becoming Queen (which gets her moved to another harem...but that's a blog for another day).
Esther was beautiful, but she was also smart. I don't know any 14 year-old girls who would have enough wit about them to navigate a strange new world, especially one that goes against everything they know and possibly goes against everything they would have wanted for themselves. Her life was far from the fairy tale it is often made out to be. Her beauty got her into a situation that she probably would not have preferred, but it was her intelligence that got her to where she was and it was this circumstance that allowed her to save an entire race of people.
My daughter is beautiful, yes. She is smart. Her name means warrior and this was very intentionally done. I want her to know that she is strong and brave and can overcome anything that life throws at her. Whatever the circumstance, I want her to have the faith to know that God will use it for good. I want her to be a bit like Esther.
May we all have a little bit of Esther in us: willing to see that we are not our circumstances. God can use the worst things to do great things.
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