He could have gone either way – his most trusted official or his queen? Based on recent events, most might have put their money on his official, not on the wife he hadn’t seen in 30 days. After all, she had a kingdom-size appeal, and she also hid a deep, dark secret. There was good reason for Queen Esther to be nervous.
In this life and death situation, Esther needed wisdom, God’s wisdom, to devise the best approach. She fasted for three days and requested her people to do the same. It would take a chorus of prayers, the proverbial Persian “Village,” to give her strength. She then donned the royal robes and went in—but with patience, only revealing her deck one card at a time.
It was not until the second banquet that she made her petition to the king, with humility yet strength and boldness launched with a personal appeal: “Let my life be given me …. and the lives of my people.” Her life was on the line and Esther needed a royal rescue. She ended with a gut punch, a potential threat to the king’s reputation.
The result: The king was outraged, Haman was hanged, and Esther triumphed. She was now a force to be reckoned with, someone who commanded respect from her king despite the fact that she had concealed her identity since the day they met.
Esther made a decision, prepared through fasting, and then went to the king with strength and wisdom to make her request. What can we learn this week from Esther’s approach?
“Then Queen Esther answered, ‘If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.’” (Esther 7:3-4)