"Mordecai receives the king's ring"
Engraving by Bernard Picart & Matthys Pool
TO CHEW ON: "Now Esther spoke again to the king, fell down at his feet and implored him with tears to counteract the evil of Haman the Agagite, and the scheme which he had devised against the Jews." Esther 8:3
Though Haman himself had been put to death, his evil legacy lived on. The law encouraging a day of Jewish slaughter still stood. Esther again took her life in her hands to plead for her people.
The king was sympathetic. But even he couldn't push back circumstances to the way they were before. He made Mordecai in charge of crafting a new law. It gave the Jewish people power to band together and fight back.
However Haman's vicious decree had seemingly awakened much anti-Semitism for if we read ahead, we discover that the Jews defended themselves against a lot of attackers. They killed 500 in Shushan on the first day, 300 on the second, and in the provinces slaughtered a total of 75,000 enemies (Esther 9:12, 15, 16).
What a lesson in consequences. Even Haman's death couldn't cancel Haman's actions, although the victims of his law were not the people he had planned.
Let's respect the power of consequences in our lives and leave legacies of life not death, love not hate, light not darkness.
PRAYER: Dear God, what a sobering story illustrating the power of choices and actions. Please remind me to consider my choices and actions in the light of the consequences they will bring. Amen.
MORE: Quotes about consequences
"How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it." - Marcus Aurelius
"While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions." - Steven Covey
"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis Stevenson
Sources:
Consequences quotes
Proverbia.net
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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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