Esther

Reading Esther is always like a breathe of fresh air. I got through it quickly. My favorite quote is:

4:14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"

It is quite possible that God had Esther in this position so that He could bring deliverance through her. But if she didn't go along with it, God would bring deliverance another way.

A quote from Helen Keller seems to fit here:

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks,

Nehemiah

I am halfway through Nehemiah at this point. I always love the part in Chapter 4 where he talks about half of the men doing the work of rebuilding the wall and half were the warriors. Each worker had a warrior assigned to them. I see that as a picture of prayer.

The verse that has stood out to me during this reading was in Nehemiah 6

13 He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

He is talking about how Shemaiah told him he should hide in the temple because men were coming to kill him. Would it be a sin to go in the temple? Was the man talking about going in a part of the temple that was sacred and he was not allowed to go in. Or was Nehemiah saying that it would be a sin not to stand up to his enemies?

Revelation of sin

When Ezra is told of the people's sin of marrying the neighbouring countries women, he takes it quite hard.

And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice. Ezra 9:4

Then he begins prayer and petitioning and Israel works out a way to make it right.
What I thought was interesting about this whole episode is that Ezra is truly blindsided by the facts that are told to him, but this marrying was not a sudden happening. There were lots of men who had done this, with children being born from the unions. That takes time, that isn't instantaneous. So either he was off doing other things and he wasn't really in tune with the people or he knew about it, but didn't understand the impact of it.
Sometimes we have sin in our lives that we allow to continue on because either we ignore it, or we don't understand the impact of it.
Lord, open our eyes to our sin, so we can repent, and move on with our life in you.