FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

To set the scene, the Jewish people are in exile and a nasty named Haman plots to kill them…all of them. The heroine of the story is Esther who saves her people.  It’s a great story!  Found in the Old Testament, after Nehemiah and before Job (it’s OK to use the table of contents to find a book in the Bible.  I never understood why more folks do not and instead will leaf through the book for minutes searching as if one’s place in heaven rests on knowing the order of the books of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures……) The book of Esther is short and is the narrative foundation for the Jewish Feast of Purim. In the fourth chapter, Mordecai, Esther’s cousin tells her that “perhaps she has become queen for such a time as this.” 

I’ve been involved in advocacy efforts where that verse, “for such a time as this” was our anchor point.  It’s very stirring and inspiring to think the moment in which we were present was our destiny and we were placed in position to meet it.  

 

The verse raises the question are we shaped by the times in which we live or are we divinely placed to influence and positively affect and impact the times in which our stories unfold?

Today, is Inauguration Day.  Always historic, yet, doubly so today as we will inaugurate Kamala Harris as the first woman Vice-President in our nation’s history. (Also, the first person of color and the first of South-Asian descent).  As a woman whose grandmother had birthed 10 children before she could exercise her right to vote and personally as one whose first time to vote pulled the lever for the first woman on a presidential ticket….this inauguration day is one to celebrate! 

 

What times we are in. As a nation we are scared, angry, divided, sick, broke and seemingly beside ourselves. Cue Joseph R. Biden, Jr.  He’s run for president two previous times and flamed out early in the process.  This time he won fair and there.

 

Joe Biden has known great loss and deep grief.  He’s the best person for these times in which we find ourselves, steel ourselves and make our way through. We need to name the loss, we need to grieve, we need to heal. Is he the president for “such a time as this” ----- personally, I don’t believe God gives two figs about our grand democratic experiment any more than the Divine is concerned about the government in New Zealand or Germany or Sierra Leone.  Yet, as an American, I believe his life experience and his decency are exactly what is needed now.