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Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Friday, 23 January 2026:
Esther 3:1-2 — After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman….
Power concentrates. Haman is elevated suddenly, disproportionately, and without moral qualification. He is given honor, authority, and visibility, everything the world associates with success. The king commands universal submission, and most comply without question.
Mordecai alone refuses to bow. The text does not yet explain why, presumably from a position of fidelity to God, but the refusal is costly. In a culture built on honor and hierarchy, dissent is perceived not as conscience but as threat. Evil often reveals itself first not through violence, but through demands for unthinking conformity.
God orchestrated circumstances that placed Mordecai at a decision point of faith – how he responded at this decision-point mattered. Faithfulness here is quiet and stubborn, not celebrated or strategic. Mordecai does not lead a movement; he simply stands. The kingdom of God often advances not through influence but through refusal, through the resolve to not give ultimate allegiance to what demands worship it does not deserve.
While you likely will not be faced with an obvious life-or-death decisions today, every day your decisions bring life or death, depending on whether they are faithful to the God of Life or not. As Jesus said, if you aren’t abiding in Him and His word, nothing you do has any life at all, only death. Every decision you make, every little decision, is a seed planted which will grow into things you can’t imagine. No decision is insignificant. Do not bow to compromise in the little things but remain faithful moment by moment, and watch those seeds blossom.
Esther 3:3-6 — Why do you transgress the king’s command? … Haman was filled with fury.
What begins as a personal slight metastasizes into genocidal intent. Haman’s pride cannot tolerate a single exception. When he learns Mordecai is a Jew, the offense becomes ideological. It is no longer enough to punish the man; the people must be erased.
Haman hated the Jews, not because they believed in God but because they refused to treat him the way he wanted to be treated. This is the anatomy of evil. Pride seeks total control. It cannot coexist with dissent. It does not stop at discipline; it aims at annihilation. Scripture consistently portrays this pattern: when worship is demanded by power, refusal is labeled rebellion, and difference becomes justification for destruction.
Mordecai’s quiet fidelity now exposes the stakes. Faithfulness is never merely personal; it has communal consequences. One man’s refusal becomes the occasion for a people’s sentence, yet also the seed of their future deliverance.
Mordecai’s refusal to compromise threated the comfort and security of all of God’s people, much as did Moses’ fidelity to God. Are you willing to be faithful to Jesus even when other Christians don’t like it, even if it might cause trouble for people you care about?
Esther 3:7 — In the first month… they cast Pur, that is, they cast lots….
Chance is invoked. Superstition is consulted. Dates are calculated. The machinery of death is scheduled with precision, as if fate itself endorses the plan.
But Scripture is unafraid of irony. The lot is cast as though history is random, yet the entire event will later be named after this very practice — Purim. What evil uses to determine timing, God transforms into testimony. What appears accidental becomes commemorative.
Human power believes it controls time. God governs it. The delay between decree and destruction, nearly a year, will become the space where salvation unfolds. Grace often hides in the interval.
Esther 3:8-11 — There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not to the king’s profit to tolerate them.
Haman’s accusation is chillingly familiar. God’s people are portrayed as disloyal, disruptive, and dangerous because they are distinct. Their difference is framed as threat; their faithfulness as sedition.
The king does not investigate. He delegates destruction casually. Genocide is authorized with indifference, sealed by a ring, and funded with silver. Evil is efficient when conscience is outsourced.
Notably, God is still unnamed. No prophet interrupts. No miracle intervenes. From every visible angle, evil has momentum and legitimacy. Yet Scripture invites the reader to see what the characters cannot: power does not equal sovereignty.
God’s people obeyed the laws of the land unless they conflicted with the laws of God. Mordecai and the other Jews refused to treat people as idols and were hated because of it, though they all, like Mordecai, proved faithful to even their corrupt government when possible. Obeying God rather than government would threaten their lives. Christians are called to be the conscience of society. Christians are most faithful and loving when they stand up against sin which draws people further away from God and His blessings.
Esther 3:10 — So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews.
The king was poorly advised and influenced by people with selfish motives who only desired personal gain, despite their claims of concern for the welfare of the kingdom. Today too, politics is driven by special interest groups who seek personal benefit at the expense of others outside of their group. Also, leaders today make decisions in the name of the collective good (according to popular opinion), often in ways that promote injustice.
Esther 3:12-15 — Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces….
The decree is comprehensive, irrevocable, and chillingly bureaucratic. Legal language cloaks moral horror. The system works exactly as designed — and that is the problem.
The city of Susa is confused, but the king and Haman sit down to drink. This is the moral vacuum of unchecked authority: destruction declared, conscience anesthetized. Evil celebrates before it conquers.
Yet this is not the end of the story. It is the darkest turn before reversal begins. Scripture often allows evil to speak fully so that its defeat will be unmistakable. The silence of God here is not absence, it is restraint before action.
Esther 3 confronts the reader with a sobering truth: faithfulness does not guarantee immediate safety, and obedience may initially make circumstances worse. Evil can organize faster than righteousness. It can legislate, mobilize, and celebrate while God appears silent.
But the chapter also exposes evil’s fatal flaw, its certainty. Haman believes history bends to power, that people can be erased, and that timing is on his side. He does not know that God has already placed Esther, recorded Mordecai’s loyalty, and delayed the decree’s execution.
The Cross reveals this pattern in its fullest form. What looked like the final triumph of injustice became the means of eternal redemption. Evil acted with confidence; grace worked with patience. The outcome was not determined by strength, but by sovereignty.
Hope, then, is not optimism. It is trust in a God who allows evil to advance only far enough to expose itself — and then overturns it completely.
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 23 January 2026: Identify where you may feel pressured to conform in ways that compromise conscience or quiet faithfulness. Ask yourself: Am I refusing to bow where allegiance belongs only to God, even if the cost is unseen or misunderstood? Choose one act of faithful resistance today — speak truth without aggression, maintain integrity without recognition, or remain obedient where silence would be easier.
Pray: “Father, when evil appears organized and powerful, steady my heart. Forgive me for equating visibility with victory or silence with absence. Teach me to remain faithful when obedience feels costly and outcomes uncertain. Thank You that history is not governed by chance, pride, or power, but by Your sovereign grace. Strengthen me to stand where You call me to stand, trusting that You are already at work beyond what I can see. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
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