For Such a Time as This
GOD’S WORD
Esther 4:14
DEVOTIONAL BY
Captain Kelsey Bridges
EBC DIRECTOR OF CURRICULUM
"If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”
It’s almost unreal to think that it’s been five years since the COVID - 19 pandemic swept in and saturated our world. When the shutdown began in early 2020, it felt as if life pressed an unexpected pause button. Streets grew silent, calendars were cleared, and the routines we once clung to disappeared over night. As the noise of normal life faded, many of us began to hear something deeper. In the stillness, spiritual lessons emerged. The disruption of COVID - 19 forced us to rediscover God in new, often uncomfortable ways. What began as a crisis became a classroom, one that continues to shape our faith, our understanding of community, and our view of God's presence in the unknown.
When the lockdown season began, in a desperate aim to keep ourselves entertained, our family found ourselves piecing this new way of life together one jigsaw puzzle at a time as our dining table became a battlefield of tiny pieces and growing patience. What began as a boredom cure became afamily ritual, one edge piece at a time. No one prepares you for the card board chaos that can unfold when you launch into a 1,000-piece puzzle with elementary-aged boys and the emotional journey it can lead you on. We saw frustration, thrill, and discouragement, all within a few moments of intense concentration!
As I rummaged through hundreds of tiny pieces sitting next to my 9-year-old, I felt more like an attorney than a mother. Negotiating pieces, convincing, coercing them to fit inside my plan. The colors almost aligned, the curves nearly kissed, but something wasn’t quite right. It all came back to timing, and I had a choice to make. I could either force the fit, ripple the edges, and bulge the pieces until the puzzle starts to whisper in protest. Or, I could trust the process, knowing that if I embraced the timing, the pieces would eventually start falling into place in just the right moment. Choosing the latter, the full picture began to emerge days later and what first felt random, now revealed intention.
That’s Esther’s story in chapter 4. She’s a Jewish girl swept into a beauty contest she didn’t ask for, chosen for reasons that seemed entirely outside her control. Her world must’ve felt like a pile of puzzle pieces: disconnected, unfair, even frightening. But God was putting the pieces together behind the scenes. Though His name isn’t mentioned in the chapter, His hand is unmistakably present, orchestrating timing, positioning Esther, softening hearts, and preparing the way for deliverance long before the crisis came. And isn’t that just like God? When we can't see the whole picture, when the puzzle doesn’t make sense, He sees it. He’s forming something beautiful even in the hidden, silent moments.
Esther may have felt like that. Out of place in a palace that wasn’t her home, holding a position she never asked for, watching danger grow while she was told to stay silent. When Mordecai urges her to go before the king, he’s helping her realize something. She is the missing piece, and she is to be used now. As Mordecai speaks prophetically over her, “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14), we see God’s invisible hand moving through human decisions and circumstances.
Esther didn't campaign for the throne. She didn't orchestrate her rise to royalty. She was placed there, quietly, over time. Mordecai is essentially saying: This isn't coincidence. God has placed you here on purpose, at the right time, for a reason. She wasn’t meant to act earlier. She couldn’t have forced her way into the king’s presence before. But in that moment found in Esther 4, the pieces began to align. The picture was forming, and she had a choice: Would she trust that this was the moment her life had been shaped for?
God often works like a master puzzle-builder. We want to force things to happen, make sense of our calling before its time. But God waits until everything is in the right place, and then He calls us to move, not by force, but by faith. Like Esther, you might be holding a piece of God’s bigger plan. You’ve tried to make sense of it, wondered if you even fit. But what felt like waiting or confusion might just be preparation. And when the moment is right, God will show you exactly where you belong.
OUR CORPORATE PRAYER
Father, You know everything before we even think it, before it’s even on our radar. You know what our response is going to be to any given situation. Help us, Father, to give you all of the puzzle pieces in our lives and grant us the kind of faith that will allow You to work in and through our lives so that we might be ready for such a time as this. In the most amazing name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen!