Vashti

KING AHASUERUS OF PERSIA, better known as Xerxes, decided to throw a party. He invited not only everybody who was anybody, but everybody who was nobody in particular too, and as far as expense went, the sky was the limit. It was to last for seven days, and the palace was turned upside down getting ready for it. New blue-and-white curtains were hung in all the windows, silver couches were moved in by the cartload, and drinks were served in goblets of pure gold. Vashti, the king's wife and queen, decided that the boys shouldn't be the only ones to enjoy themselves, so she threw a party of her own and asked in all the girls.

By the time the seventh day rolled around, the king was feeling no pain. Having shown off all his other treasures, he decided the moment had come to show off Queen Vashti too. She was a raving beauty, and he wanted to see the rest of the boys turn green with envy when he paraded her around in front of them for a while. So he sent word to her through a couple of eunuchs to get down there in a hurry. On the grounds that she was a human being rather than a silver couch and that a woman was as good as a man any day, she refused to be trotted out as a sex object and turned the king down flat.

Needless to say, the king was fit to be tied. Not only had he and his friends been personally insulted, but if Vashti was allowed to get away with a thing like that, who could tell what the girls would be up to next. Maybe even asking for the vote. Therefore he divorced her on the spot and married a lady named Esther instead.

That is how Queen Vashti lost her throne but kept her self-respect, and there seems to be absolutely no question as to which of the two she valued more highly.

Esther 1-2 

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Vanity

VANITY IS FUTILITY.

According to the book of Ecclesiastes, everything is vanity because the good and the evil, the wise and the foolish, the lucky and the unlucky, the haves and the have-nots all turn to dust in the end. If you're honest about it, that's a hard point to refute.

Saint Paul puts it this way, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:14,19). In other words, he is as honest as Ecclesiastes if not more so. But then he goes one step further.

He says Christ has been raised. In honesty he has to say that too, because on his way to the city of Damascus one day he experienced it. That being so, he suggests, not even death is futile. That being so, not even life is in vain. 

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

U.S.A.

THE KU KLUX KLAN and the Bill of Rights. Moby Dick and drugstore paperbacks. Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon. The Mississippi River and Coney Island. Reinhold Niebuhr and Aimee Semple McPherson. The Vietnam War and the Peace Corps.

Out of many, one. The question, of course, is: one what? The hope of the world? The despair of the world?

Anybody who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is unlikely to forget it. The U.S.S.R. refusing to call back its freighters. The U.S.A. refusing to call off its blockade. The world going to sleep at night wondering if there would be a world to wake up to in the morning.

One misstep is all it would have taken. One misstep is all it will take. 

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Uses of Memory

I AM INCLINED to believe that God's chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn't play those roles right the first time round, we can still have another go at it now. We cannot undo our old mistakes or their consequences any more than we can erase old wounds that we have both suffered and inflicted, but through the power that memory gives us of thinking, feeling, imagining our way back through time we can at long last finally finish with the past in the sense of removing its power to hurt us and other people and to stunt our growth as human beings.  

The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later. 

- Originally published in Telling Secrets

Unbelief

UNBELIEF IS AS MUCH OF A CHOICE as belief is. What makes it in many ways more appealing is that, whereas to believe in something requires some measure of understanding and effort, not to believe doesn't require much of anything at all.

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words