God's Good Advice

Job is an interesting tale. Here is a man who has everything in the world and not only that, but the world thinks highly of him. He's somehow done what so many of us struggle to do and surrounded himself with good friends - the kind of good friends who will come and sit on an ash heap with him and talk about life, God, and faith. 

Those are good friends. 

And yet...they're wrong. 

We know this because we remember this every time we read the story. Once you've read it a time or two, it's hard to read without getting frustrated or downright angry with Job's friends because they're just spouting all this religious-sounding stuff - the kind of stuff we're all familiar with ourselves and that hasn't been helpful to us in our times of trouble - but it lacks fundamental understanding and basic...kindness. 

Job's friends mean well, but they are not nice to him. Actually, I think they think they are being nice. I think they think they are speaking the "hard truth" that Job "needs to hear" and that "real" friendship is sometimes "tough love," and the more Job pushes back against them and tells them they are misguided, the more they double down until you get the sense they are at the very least exasperated with him. At most, they think maybe he's duped them and he's not the kind of guy that they thought he was. 

Now we're getting into the kind of friends that most of us know. 

The arguments we get into with our friends are not over our differences of opinion. It doesn't matter to us, when we're really in relationship with someone, whether they like chocolate cake when we like vanilla or whether they buy from the local coffee shop down the street or the big name chain place across town. Preferences don't matter; it's the deeper stuff that makes us friends. We believe that we have the relationship to speak the hard truth to one another. 

And...that's why they're our friends. We trust them to do that. 

In fact, many of us go to our friends more often than we go to God when we need advice. We ask our friends what they think. We ask them to pray with us. We invite them to sit in our ash heap and reflect and reminisce and ruminate and help us figure out where we go from here, what's happening, what our next step is. 

Then, we get disappointed when that's not going well. In hard times, a lot of us find that our friends are a lot like Job's friends - well-meaning, but rough around the edges. They have a lot to say, but not a lot that seems to be in context. They have their opinions, but not a lot of understanding. I think every single one of us can think of a time we got angry with our very good friends, maybe even started yelling at them or sulking away, because they just didn't "get it." 

We forget that we have one Very Good Friend who does. 

This is Who Job remembers (which is why he can give such grace to his earthly friends). It's how he's able to look at his friends, thank them for sitting in his ash heap with him, invite him to say, but gently reject their advice. He knows, and he plainly says, "With God is the sum total of all wisdom and of all power; His is the greatest of plans and the deepest of comprehensions" (12:13). 

In other words - God understands what we don't. God understands what our friends don't. So when we're looking for understanding and good advice, it's God alone who can give it to us. 

And if we're lucky, we'll have some friends to sit in the dust together while we wait to hear it.   

The First Breakfast

When we come to the Table, we like to talk about the Last Supper. After all, it was here where Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of Me." So, remembering, here we are. 

Yet, there's more to the way that we feast with Jesus than just this. 

In that Upper Room, the disciples had no idea. None. They had traveled with Jesus for somewhere around three years, heard many sermons, taken in many parables, witnessed many healings. They were living the good life, really. Sure, the Pharisees and Sadducees were constant antagonists, but for the most part, the yoke was easy. At least, they don't tell us if it wasn't. 

In that Upper Room, they were breaking bread like they had probably done a thousand times before, their Lord and Rabbi so close to them that the disciple whom He loved could lay his head on Jesus's chest. As deeply-ingrained in their Jewish nature as the ritual of Passover was, there was something light and airy about the room. Something casual. Something...familial. (Read that again - familial.) A gathering of brothers, good friends, students. Teacher. 

In that Upper Room, very little was different than it had been every other day, as far as the disciples knew. They had probably even celebrated this meal with Jesus and maybe with some subset of each other twice already. After all, faithful Jews held this feast every year, so we can be certain that Jesus, at least, did. And we can be certain He did not eat it alone. 

And while that's all well and good, there's something about it that can seem disconnected from our own experience. Because we don't live on the Passover side of Golgotha; we live in the shadow of the Cross. 

And that Cross changes everything. 

Last week, we talked about the Next Supper - the next meal that the disciples had to eat, the first one they had to eat without Him. What it must have been like to break that bread. But remember, Jesus didn't stay away long. 

Three. simple. days. 

Then, here He was again. And look what He's doing - He's preparing another meal. 

Let's call this the First Breakfast.

The disciples are out fishing. They don't know what else to do now that their Lord is gone, so they go back to what they know. But it seems they don't know it all that well any more because they've been at it all night and haven't caught a single thing. Not a one. 

Then, there's this guy, this stranger, and they catch sight of Him over on the shore. And He's...grilling some fish. Fresh fish. Like it's nothing at all. Like these masters of their craft haven't just come up empty after a long night on the lake. Like He is just somehow casting a line and reeling in breakfast. Just like that. 

And this is important. Because remember what Jesus said at the Last Supper? He said they would not have this meal again until all things were finished. And then, remember what Jesus said on the Cross? He said, it is finished. And now, here He is on the shore of the lake, grilling up fish and breaking bread, and you can just see the grin on His face - after all the disciples have been through for three days, after all their doubts, their fears, their disappointments, after how lost they have felt without their Rabbi all of a sudden, after the mocking of the Roman guard and, we can say, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and a whole host of other persons who were all around who all have the same taunt: Messiah? Ha! 

But now, but now you can just see the grin on His face as He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, hands it out to the weary fishermen...and zealots...and tax collectors...and doubters...and...and says, It really is finished. 

Take and eat.  

By Grace

When trauma comes into a new season, into a good season, into the kind of season I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for, there's something in my heart that cries out in exhaustion - how long, O Lord?

But if I can stop for a second, take it in, breathe, and pull myself back, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for good seasons, even ones that look like they're being ruined by old things. Even ones that look like they've come maybe a bit too early, like maybe I haven't matured enough yet for it but here it is anyway.

That's really it, isn't it? We want to believe, when our good seasons come, that we're ready for them. We want to believe that we've outgrown all those former things, put them away, put them behind us, worked through them - whatever terminology we want to use - and that we're somehow "ready" now to "just enjoy" something good. "Finally." 

Then...BAM. 

But you know what? I'm thankful. 

Because it's only by the grace of God. 

Your hard things in your good seasons are a gift from God. They are an invitation. An opportunity for healing. An offer of healing that only He can provide.

You'd think that a good season would teach you that God is good. And it does. But a good season that still requires wrestling with hard things can teach you even more about God than this. 

I think it's fair to say that I have learned my most important lessons through the hard things in my good seasons. I have learned far more in these times than I have ever learned in the hard times, the times when the only thing I could devote any meaningful energy to was simply surviving. 

But put me in a good season, and suddenly, I have the reserves. I have the energy. I have what I need to confront some things, to embrace them, to challenge them, to accept them. To learn to live with the gifts they bring, to wrestle with their trials. In my hard times in good seasons, I learn the very best of me - the kinds of things I had hoped I had already learned, the things I thought would make the good seasons truly good. 

Yet, here I am, learning them for real. The things I've dreamed of. The things I've worked for. The things I'm still working for. The things that I'm finding are just as good, if not better, as I always dreamed they would be and, even more than that, they're possible. 

As much as you dream for them, they aren't possible in your hard seasons. Not if you don't already have them on reserve. When you're in fight, flight, or freeze mode all the time, none of that inspires growth. None of that puts down roots. None of that matures. It can't; it's always either in motion or anti-motion, and for real good, you need something steady - not stagnant nor frantic. 

So I'm thankful for hard times in good seasons because they mean I'm growing. They mean I can keep growing. They mean that the things I've dreamed of and prayed for are possible. They mean that God's promises are real. 

By His grace alone. 

Amen.

Therapy

We live in an age in which mental health, and the struggles that we have from living as fallen human beings in a broken world, are being acknowledged and, to the best of our ability, addressed. So when we talk about trauma and the way that it follows us around, popping up all over again even in particularly good seasons, the natural inclination is to simply recommend that we go to therapy and "work it out." 

To some degree, this is true. No one is responsible for the way you handle your trauma but you. At the end of the day, if you want to have a different relationship with your trauma, it's up to you to pursue that. To put in the effort. To put in the work. To take the initiative. To make it happen. 

But as much as we have made a business out of trauma therapy, we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot do. And what we cannot do is "cure" trauma. Nor can we determine how quickly we work through it. 

You can spend years of your life and thousands of dollars in therapy, working through your trauma with absolute earnestness. But anyone who has ever lived with actual trauma knows that even after all of that, there are going to be things in this world that still remind you. And trauma is never just nudged; it is awakened. When something reminds you, it reminds you abruptly, without warning, in full color and sound and smell and feel. It is a full body experience that you don't get to choose to experience or not. 

You only get to choose what to do with it.  

The trick, then, is not getting rid of trauma so that it doesn't get to ruin anything any more - the trick is reconfiguring your relationship with trauma so that when it shows up, your life isn't ruined. It's learning how to grieve, how to embrace the pain, how to forgive, how to offer grace (to yourself as much as others). It's learning to make the knots in your fabric as small as possible, knowing they are never going to go away, while learning how to run your fingers over the tapestry, feel them, and just keep moving on. 

So often, we think that if we still feel trauma, if we're still affected by it, if it still impacts our life and intrudes into places we haven't invited it, then we haven't "dealt" with it. We haven't "healed" from it. 

That's simply not true. 

Your trauma can come back tomorrow in a way that is so profoundly familiar to you. And if, when it does, you handle it in a healthier way, then you are dealing with it. You are healing it. You are recognizing how to live with it and making adjustments so that it doesn't destroy you any more. 

There is a way to live with trauma and gratitude, and it comes when we are able to encounter trauma well. When we are able to let it have its moment without stealing ours. That's the whole goal of trauma therapy. Not that you would never be triggered again - we're human; this stuff stays with us; it's the way we're wired - but that you would never be taken hostage by your triggers again. 

Not that you don't have trauma, but that you don't live trauma's life; you get to live your own. 

And listen, I'm not saying not to go to therapy. I'm not saying not to get professional help. I'm not saying not to build a support network. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we have to recognize trauma for what it is and not expect too much out of our pop psychology. We have to have a realistic perspective on what we can and can't do with trauma, what we can and cannot heal, what we can and cannot help. 

We cannot control what will bring trauma flooding back on us, no matter how much we work through. There will always be little details we didn't think of, things that remind us that we never thought to mention in therapy. So we have to figure out how we're going to deal with those moments.

That's the only way to keep trauma from robbing yet another season of its good things. 

Trauma

How long, O Lord? How long must I wrestle with my human things? With the same human things that seem to keep coming around and ruining every single season of my human existence? 

We're talking, of course, about trauma. It's a bit of a psychological buzzword in today's world, and it's often not used correctly. The younger generations use it to mean anything that made them upset or didn't give them what they wanted, talking about things such as, "I asked for a cup of milk one time when I was 3 years old and it took my mom and hour to get it for me and that trauma has stuck with me forever." But I'm not really talking about this kind of "trauma." I'm talking about real trauma. 

We live in a fallen world. We know this. We are assaulted by micro-traumas every day, the small slights and inconveniences that happen just by living as fallen men and women in community with other fallen men and women. The stuff that's just...life. And no matter how much we want to talk about them as these major traumas and labor to eradicate this kind of stuff from the world, we never will. As long as we are human, we will wound each other in small ways every day without ever meaning to. A little grace covers many microtraumas and keeps them from becoming pathological. For most of us. 

But some of us know real trauma. We have stories. We have pasts. We have the really heavy stuff that we always seem to have picked up again somewhere, no matter how many times we've thought we've laid it down. 

That's what we do, right? We get into these good seasons when things finally seem like maybe they are starting to break open, like maybe there's a little space for us to breathe again. Like we can see a little bit of the sun through these dark clouds and all of a sudden, we raise our faces heavenward, take a big, deep, healing breath in, and blow those dark clouds all to smithereens because here, now, we're finally in a place where we can do that. Where our trauma doesn't have to follow us into a new season. Where there's nothing but wide open future in front of us, and we'll be damned if we're going to let the past poison that. 

And then, we look up, and there's that stupid cloud again. Without our permission. Without our conscious thought. Without our want. And we're screaming all over again - how many more seasons of my life does this junk get to ruin? 

And the answer is...complicated. 

Because the thing about trauma is that this is what it does. It follows you around. It goes with you. And it does this until you deal with it in a healthy way. 

Unfortunately, you can't deal with trauma in a healthy way when you're busy adding to it. When you're in dark seasons, unsafe seasons, traumatic seasons, broken seasons - you just don't have the resources (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional) to actually deal with the trauma, so it keeps following you around. And all of these little things keep triggering this stuff in your mind whenever it seems safe to do so, reminding you that it's there and that you need to deal with it. 

It's that same feeling you get when you walk into the kitchen and know you went there for a reason but can't remember what that reason was. Trauma nudges you just enough to move, but you can't remember what you're doing there. Because it's not obvious and you don't have the resources and there's nothing really to do, but trauma keeps reminding you that you need to go to the kitchen. 

Until, of course, you're in a season in which you can actually just go to the kitchen. That's why the bad stuff always seems to get into our good seasons and bring its poison with it. You're never more likely to survive a poisoning than when you're at your strongest, so as soon as you get into these strong seasons, these good seasons, these days you've been waiting for, your trauma is like...I've been waiting, too. I've been waiting for you to be able to deal with me. So here I am! It's me! I came to live in your good season with you so we can do all the things together! 

Ugh. 

How many more seasons do you get to ruin for me? 

As many as it takes until your heart can truly untangle it and work through the mess and take out the knots that life has made in the you that was knit together with tremendous love. That's how many.  

How Long, O Lord?

Do you have these things in your life that just seem to follow you around, no matter where you are or what you do? You just can't seem to get away from them. 

We think that changing our circumstances will get us away from them, but here they are again anyway. We think that having a really good season gets us away from the bad stuff that haunts us, but it seems to follow us anyway. There doesn't seem to be a day, doesn't seem to be a breath, without this stuff hanging over us like a thick, dark cloud - always threatening to rain, even on the days when it doesn't. In fact, that cloud seems to be all the darker on the brighter days. 

Maybe it's the contrast. I don't know. 

I have these things in my life. I have these things that just chase me around and seem bent on ruining whatever good thing I have going for me. Even if they don't ruin the actual thing itself - even if they don't run me wholly into the ground the way they so often seek to - they still ruin my ability to enjoy my good seasons.

I go home at night and wrestle with these things. Knowing, knowing, they are there. Knowing they're trying. Knowing I'm wrestling against them, even if I also know that it's not going to rain today. At least, I'm fairly sure that it's not going to rain today. 

But they're heavy anyway. The threat looms large. The history that I have with my things, knowing what they've done to me in the past, hangs like dead weight around my shoulders, pulling my head down. I find myself just wanting to scream, How many more times do you get to destroy my life? How many more good things, good days, good breaths do you get to take from me?

Sometimes, I do. 

And listen, I'm not talking about "big, bad things." I'm not talking about the stuff we always think we're talking about when we talk about stuff like this, although those things qualify, too. I don't have a bunch of big, dark secrets hiding in my closet. I don't have some heinous double life where I've been hiding the "real" me from everyone. I don't have some massive thing going on that would shock you if you heard about it. 

I've got human things. The byproducts of living in a broken flesh in a fallen world. The years of accumulated baggage that I've picked up from the baggage that others have thrown into my existence. The baggage I've added to my own shoulders by the way I've responded. The wrestling of the flesh that comes with not absolutely loving everything about the unique way that God has created me - complicated, of course, by others who also have not loved everything about the unique way that God has created me and who have not been polite about it.

Human things. The same kinds of things we're all wrestling with, our own versions of them. And yet, that familiar heavy weight that makes me just want to scream - how much longer? how much more? how many more times, more days, more breaths? 

How long, O Lord?  

The Next Supper

When we talk about the Table, we talk about the Last Supper - that Passover feast when Jesus broke bread with His disciples in the Upper Room. When Peter complained about having his feet washed. When it got into Judas's heart to betray the Lord. When Jesus said, "Do this...in remembrance of Me." 

But sometimes, I think about the next supper. 

I think about the next day, the day when Jesus was crucified. It was the day before the Sabbath, which would have started at sundown that night. It was the day in which the people were preparing not only their last fresh meal, but a meal that would keep and be a little stale for the Sabbath. Cooking, depending on what part of it you were doing, would be considered "work." So many of the things had to be made ahead. 

There were persons who were threshing wheat while nails were being driven into Jesus's hands and feet. Persons who were kneading dough when a spear was being plunged into His side. Persons who were pouring wine while a rag was being soaked in bitter gall. 

Was it hanging heavy over them?

What about when they sat down to dinner that night, their Rabbi in a borrowed tomb, all the life drained from His body, and they broke the bread? I picture this moment, this catch in their hearts the way Peter's heart must have caught when he heard the rooster crow just a few hours earlier. 

Do this.... 

Lord, I can't. You lay dead in a borrowed tomb, and how? How can I break bread? How can I do this when it reminds me of You, reminds me of this Table we shared just last night?

How can I break bread on the Sabbath, on the day of rest, when everything inside of me is in turmoil? When I'm torn up inside-out? When my guts are wrenched within me?

I break bread, and...I remember. Whether I want to or not, I remember. Whether I intend to or not, I remember. That's what You said, Lord - You said, "Remember."

And today, I don't want to. I don't know how I can. I don't know what it means to remember when everything I think I know has changed in a single day, in a single breath. In Your last breath. 

The Last Supper? 

No. The challenge is the Next Supper. The one I have to eat while my Lord is crucified. When it's not His hand that gives me the bread, but my own. When it's not His voice I hear, but the heavy silence. 

When I remember...because I can't forget.  

God of Justice

We are living in a time when "justice" is a buzzword - social justice, racial justice, criminal justice, election justice. Justice for everyone! Justice for all! 

Can we even define justice? 

In the very same breath that we try to define it in one term, but we can't. Justice is ensuring equal opportunity for everyone, but we think it also requires stripping "privilege" from some. Justice is holding everyone responsible for their actions, but some are more responsible for their actions than others. We want to have justice for the black man killed by the white man, but we also recognize that if we had true justice to begin with, neither of those men would have been in that position in the first place. 

Thus, at the very same time that we think we know what justice is, we realize that justice starts someplace way before we are ready to execute it and true justice will never come until we trace it all the way back and find the absolute fundamental root of it and start there. 

Until we do, we're just putting a band-aid on the symptoms. And we know that.

So let's go back to where justice begins. 

It begins with God. 

It begins with goodness that spoke everything into being, set everything exactly into place, commissioned the world to grow and to thrive together, and had order. That "very good" God talks about in Genesis 1 is justice, in every single way that we want to define it. It is the thing that keeps us from being in a place where we have to try to figure out what justice is at all. 

If we want to restore justice, we have to get back to God. Period. We have to go back to the way He does it. We have to seek His heart in all things and then, execute. Put it into practice. Bring it into the world. 

I know, I know. There are many who will wrestle with this. Many who struggle to reconcile a good God in a broken world the way it is. We struggle with putting the pieces back together because there's something in us that has us even questioning God. 

But God's way is still good. It is still very good. And even Job's friends - who didn't get a lot of things right - got this right. When it comes to justice, they had this to say: 

Does God corrupt justice, or does the Highest One corrupt the good? 

The answer is intended to be a resounding, "Of course not." Of course not. 

So if we're looking for justice, we have to go back to God. Because there and only there will we find it uncorrupted. 

God's Miracles

Job had every trouble conceivable to man. Every single one. He faced loss, disease, brokenness, condemnation. His own friends, his very good friends, sat next to him while he scratched himself with broken shards of pottery until his boils were bleeding all over the ash heap that used to be his life, and they told him what a terrible sinner he must be - a terrible sinner in secret, since he had such a high reputation in the entire community. 

Wow, Job. You're just not who we thought you were. And now, look at you - all exposed like this. Did you think you could get away with it forever? 

The entire book of Job is basically one long discourse encouraging the man to just "curse God and die." Just call God out. Blame God for the trouble. Take Him to the mat. 

And yet, Job - from his very own ash heap - cannot stop talking about the goodness of God. The rightness of God. The righteousness of God. 

The miracles of God. 

I don't know that anybody in all the Bible talks about the miracles of God the way that Job does. 

In his discourse to his friends, while they're busy condemning him and judging some kind of private lift they've concluded he must be living, from the pile of rubble that used to be his life, covered in ashes, bleeding from his boils, childless, money-less, homeless, Job declares, 

He does wonderful things that confound, infinite numbers of miracles.

Infinite numbers of miracles. I doubt at this point that Job could even count, realistically, the numbers of things that he's lost in his tragedy. He's described early in his story as an extremely wealthy man. Can he number his losses at all? Could he even try? 

Yet, here he is saying that if there's something in this world that you simply can't count, it's God's miracles. If there's something it's impossible to put a number on, it's God's goodness. His friends are trying to get him to reflect on how empty his life has become, and how quickly, and all Job can talk about is the fullness of God. 

All this stuff? It's nothing. Look at the miracles. We could talk about the miracles forever. 

Life is about perspective - what are you looking at? 

If you're looking at your shards and ashes, all you'll ever count is your losses. And maybe you could count forever. Maybe, like Job, your losses seem neverending and your life is truly empty. 

But maybe, it's not as empty as it seems. Maybe there are miracles all around you, even in a time like this. Maybe...maybe God is just as Job has seen Him - the Lord of infinite numbers of miracles, wonderful things that confound human minds. 

Maybe you just have to be willing to be confounded. 

God of Trouble

It's interesting, but it's actually more common for Christians to believe that God is the source of our trouble than it is for the world to believe that. The world wrestles with theodicy - the problem of evil in the world in contrast to stories about a loving God - but they do so on sort of a grand, philosophical scale. Christians, on the other hand, seem to wrestle with it on a very personal level. And what they often come up with is that God is causing our problems. 

We have a number of reasons we give for attempting to justify this line of thinking. Perhaps God is testing us. Perhaps we have sinned and we are being punished. Perhaps our parents or grandparents sinned and we are just bearing the burden of it. And on and on and on we go, attempting to justify in our minds how our loving God could still be loving us while also giving us trouble. 

And, of course, we always say that "God's discipline is good even if it doesn't feel good." But we say this while trying to justify what would not be a loving, disciplining Father but an abusive monster. 

Friends, that's just no way to believe. That's no God to believe in. That's no Lord to love. 

The Bible tells us plainly that the things that we say aren't true.

God doesn't tempt us. God always gives us a way to stand up under temptation. God already punished Jesus for our sin; if He was punishing us with terrible things, it would be rendering less-than-perfect the sacrifice of His Son. Can you imagine Him doing that? God doesn't punish us for the sins of others; He stopped that practice well before Jesus, and Jesus did not bring it back. God's discipline isn't abusive. 

The Bible is clear on these things.

And in case it weren't, in case we can't read the very plain words written right in front of our faces over and over and over again, through covenant after covenant, through the Gospel (the Good News) of Jesus, and into the church, God gave us one more story that ought to put this to bed for us: 

Job. 

Job is a lesson in the trouble that we have in this world. And...none of it was caused by God. Not a bit of it. 

Job considers the idea. His friends feed him the same ideas that we have when we're trying to justify our troubles as God's doing. But Job comes to the same conclusion every time - nope. Wasn't God. Wasn't my sin. Wasn't some punishment. Isn't some discipline. Isn't God's doing, at all. God is still good. God is still faithful. God still loves me. 

And...the book tells us he's right. The book tells us God didn't cause any of Job's troubles. 

So if the rest of the witness of the Bible wasn't enough, we have this. 

Is God the cause of your trouble in any way, shape, or form? 

One look at the Cross should answer that. 

God and World

One of the things that frustrates us as believers is that God doesn't just come and put everything right in the world. From the beginning of time, we as humans have been asking - why do the wicked prosper? Why do the good suffer? Why doesn't God just step into this broken world and put it back together? Why doesn't He stop bad things from happening?

It's called "theodicy" - the problem of evil in the world - and it seems to most of us that the most simple way to solve it is for God to just be God and do God things and exert His force and power (and, uhm, love and stuff, you know) as God to just end it. 

But...He doesn't. 

Drives you crazy, doesn't it?

Whenever I'm thinking about this sort of thing, whenever I'm wrestling with what God does and doesn't do about evil in the world, I'm drawn to the book of Esther. Yes, Esther.

In Esther, the evil man Haman acquires the king's signet ring and signs, seals, and delivers an order for all of the Jews in the entire kingdom to be executed. Slaughtered. En masse and on the same day. When that day comes, all the people have been instructed to kill their Jewish neighbors. 

Of course, Mordecai has the king's favor, and so does Esther, and when the whole plot comes to light, Haman is hanged on a pole he erected himself, Mordecai is promoted, and things are looking up. 

Kinda.

Because there's still this little problem of a decree signed in the king's name that permits the killing of all Jews. All the men of the kingdom are aware of it by now. They're already planning. They already know how that day is going to go. And by the rule of the land, anything sealed in the king's ring cannot be undone. You can't just rip up the order.

But Mordecai is given the king's ring to issue whatever order he sees fit in response to Haman's order. 

Now, if it were me, I would issue a new decree that says that we don't listen to dead men, especially dead men who were hanged on their own pole for their own wickedness. I would issue a decree that says that we don't entertain that kind of nonsense and appeal to the moral character of the people as a whole. But...of course, it wasn't me. And honestly, in a society that is ruled by dictate, appealing to the innate moral character of humanity probably doesn't work. 

Still, I would have been tempted to simply issue a decree stating that the old decree is null and void. It, too, would be sealed with the king's ring, so...newest order wins? 

That's not how it goes down. Instead, Mordecai issues a new order stating that the Jews can fight back. (Could they not fight back without an order? Actually, they could not. For they would have been guilty of murder, which would have further threatened their place in society.) But Mordecai tells them they can fight back. They can defend themselves, even unto death. And now, it's all-out war basically. 

And this is where we find ourselves, as well. 

We're in constant battle with the world, at odds with the way they do things here. At odds with how they live. God has plainly told us we would be at odds with this world. And as much as we want Him to just step in and end it all, put all the broken things back together, the truth is that He doesn't. What He has done is to issue a new decree telling us that we can fight back. That we don't have to conform to the patterns of this world. That this world is not our home. That we are to be in the world, not of the world. 

He has told us we can stand up. That's the decree of the Lord in the face of evil. 

...for now.