Daily Devotionals

'Every Day Light' with Selwyn Hughes

Devotional: July 10th

For Reading and Meditation:
     Esther 3:5-6

When the news is carried to Haman that one man in the kingdom will not bow down to him, he is extremely angry. By this time it is a well known fact that Mordecai is a Jew. Haman, bearing as he did a strong hatred of the Jewish people, would have liked to have ended Mordecai's life there and then. He knows, however, that to act in this way would not endear him to the people for there was in Persia at that time a great respect for the processes of the law. Also, people might have said: "How can Haman be afraid of one solitary Jew?" Haman begins to think up a plan that will bring him the revenge he seeks and a fiendish idea crosses his mind - why not exterminate the whole Jewish race? History is replete with instances of people who have tried to exterminate the Jews. Behind these ideas lies the archenemy of the human race himself - Satan. The devil knows there are two classes of people who are specially chosen by God - the Jewish nation and the Church of God. His hatred is aimed at both. If Satan had been able to exterminate the Jews then there would have been no Savior, for it was prophesied that our Lord would be of Jewish descent. Strangely, it is Satan's hatred of the Jews that has kept the race alive through every century. Persecution served to keep them together and to maintain their identity no matter what. Another evidence of how God uses adverse circumstances as "grist to His mill."

My Father and my God, the more I see how nothing can frustrate Your eternal purposes, the more I realize how unnecessary are my fears. Let these truths that I am considering permeate every part of my soul. In Jesus' Name I pray. Amen.