Thoughts About Esther

I was amazed by the reactions I got to my last post. A lot of you were disagreeing with what I speculated, and you got rather angry in either defending your personal idea of God or in saying that there was no spiritual activity in Esther. Let me just say, I’m not here to solve that question. Esther never mentions God’s name. Personally, I’m an agnostic—I believe in the possibility of a god, but I don’t think it’s likely. As for you, this is the internet, and you’re all free to have your own thoughts. Just try to keep it civil, please?

Anyway, I thought I’d wrap up this series with analyzing Esther a bit more in terms of her leadership and character traits. Here are the key points I found in Esther’s journals as we've discussed them over this past action-packed month.

1. Esther prayed first when confronted with a problem. She appealed to a higher force for strength; that seems pretty key to her positive mindset and courage.

2. Esther recruited her people to fast and pray with her. Having outside encouragement and a feeling of being supported by a family is a key trait of being able to act outside of your comfort zone.

3. Esther was confident that deliverance would come. Now, this doesn’t necessarily apply to all of us—we don’t all have that same faith in a Supreme Being—but we can all be positive and believe in ourselves.

4. Esther acted in spite of her fear. She didn’t stick to leading in what she knew, but she took a step that could have proved a disaster. She was afraid, and she acted anyway.

5. Esther failed at first. Even when things didn’t go as planned, though, she kept trying. She stuck to her task until it was finished—after three tries.

6. Esther was humble. She credited her victory to her god, to her people—to anyone but herself. I hate it when leaders are stuck-up about how much they’ve done; I think Esther’s view holds much more value and makes her a nicer person, too.

Those are just some of the points I picked up on as we went through Esther’s journal and notes. I plan to write this up in more depth as I prepare my research summaries and papers at the end of this semester. Send me a note if you’d like me to send you my full research, or if you have any questions about methodology, translation, accuracy, or the conclusions I’ve reached. It’s been an amazing few months with you all! Thank you for reading and commenting!