I Will Stand
by Chuck Swindoll
When it comes to touching the heart, few things do it
as well as a song or a story. We all know occasions where the right music
combined with the right lyrics wooed us or someone we know back to God.
Sometimes it is a song that our mother taught us, or some moving hymn we
learned years ago in church. Nostalgia serves us best when it's a magnet,
drawing our hearts back to God.
A story will do the same, softening the soil of our
souls. When you have the right characters who carry out life's issues in a plot
that is mixed with adventure, surprise, and some humor, along with purpose and
an ultimate moral, there's something about that story that sweeps us into a
right state of mind. Esther is just such a story. It has adventure and suspense
mixed with courage and hope, plus a touch of humor and certainly a twist of
surprise.
What a great film or play Esther would make. Can't you just hear the words of Mordecai
ringing with passion as he says, "If you remain silent at this time,
relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and
your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained
royalty for such a time as this?"
And then, with incredilble courage, Esther herself
replies, "Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for
me; do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maidens also
will fast in the same way. And thus I will go in to the king, which is not
according to the law; and if I perish, I perish."
I can hear the applause as the curtain closes on this
act with this grand speech that prepares our leading lady to take her place in
history.
It reminds me of something C. S. Lewis said about the
importance of being loyal to a cause that is greater than ourselves. He likened
that quality to a person's chest. "What we need are people with chests." The old American word for this is "guts." We need
people with guts who will say, "I will stand for this, and if I must die
for it, then I die."
Will you be one of those people?
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