November 8, 2017: Day 79 – Esther 3

The plot thickens, but slowly.  Haman is infuriated that a fledgling, Mordecai a Jew, would not bow down to him.  He is told that Mordecai is a Jew so in order to hurrt him and his entire race, he decides to exterminate all of the Jews.  So, this is real similar to what Hitler did.  I am convinced that the more we forget history, the more we are condemned to repeat it.  George Santayana coined this phrase but his was directly the following: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  It is imperative that we remember and learn about our past so that we do not repeat.

Needless to say Haman gets the king’s permission to eliminate the Jews through an edict which covered the entire land from Italy to India assuring that any who did not bow down to the king and his subjects would be destroyed.  This included, especially, the Jews.  Haman and the king celebrated with a drink while the people of Susa, a stronghold of Jewish culture, were thrown into confusion as to what that might mean for them directly.

Have you ever been targeted unfairly by a person or a government simply because of the way that you were born.  I have to say that I was not.  I remember always being proud of being a bit different.  Growing up in Rome I enjoyed the fact that I could play with my Italian friends but still know another language.  In my younger years here in the States I remember being different because not everyone had spent most of their life in another country.  I liked that, but it did not disqualify me from anything and it was, in fact, actually to my advantage.  But not everything that we are born with or experience puts us in a better position.  Sometimes our race, or our gender is a disqualifying feature for some people.  It seems like the people of Israel, the Jewish people, have historically felt that oppression.  

As Christians we have to repent for those times that this oppression has come in the name of our God.  For whatever reason there is never any excuse to single out any race or any group of people and consider them our “enemies”.  In fact, we are beholden to the Jewish people for so much, including the birth of our Savior and the Holy Scriptures which we have.  I pray we would take a perspective that is one of gratitude as opposed to a historical animosity.