¹⁹ When the virgins were assembled a second time, Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate. ²⁰ But Esther had kept secret her family background and nationality just as Mordecai had told her to do, for she continued to follow Mordecai’s instructions as she had done when he was bringing her up.

²¹ During the time Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s officers who guarded the doorway, became angry and conspired to assassinate King Xerxes. ²² But Mordecai found out about the plot and told Queen Esther, who in turn reported it to the king, giving credit to Mordecai. ²³ And when the report was investigated and found to be true, the two officials were impaled on poles. All this was recorded in the book of the annals in the presence of the king.

Dear God, there are interesting cause and effect principles in play here. We think of this being the story of how the Jews were saved through Esther being made queen, but let’s play a “what if”. What if Esther had told people she was Jewish? What if she was expelled from the virgin competition over it? What if Mordecai weren’t sitting by the gate to check up on Esther? What if the two guards had succeeded? Well, if Mordecai had not been there then he would have had to bow down to Haman later and the Jewish people wouldn’t have been targeted. So is this the story about the saving of the Jewish people or the story of how Xerxes was saved, but in doing that the Jewish people needed to be saved too?

Of course, there is no way to answer any of this. History is history. John F. Kennedy was president during the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of Nixon (by a narrow vote). George W. Bush was president on September 11 instead of Al Gore (by a narrower vote). Were those elections providential? Perhaps. But we’ll never know. History is what it is.

My wife read a Stephen King book that plays the “what if” game regarding Kennedy’s assassination. What if the Lee Harvey Oswald had been stopped? How would history be different. It’s fund to consider, but we could send ourselves in circles chasing the answers when those same answers wouldn’t change our reality today.

Father, history is what it is. That includes my personal life. I chose the college I chose. I chose the jobs and cities I chose. I chose the wife I chose. I make hundreds of little decisions each day. Any one of them could change the course of a life. So I offer all of the paranoia I might be tempted to fall into to you and ask that you please be with me in the decisions I will make today. Make them as pure and selfless as possible. And please don’t let any of my mistakes do too much harm.