Esther is the only book of the Bible that never mentions God explicitly — and yet His providence saturates every page. A Jewish orphan raised by her cousin Mordecai was taken into the Persian king's harem when Queen Vashti was deposed, and became queen. When Haman the Agagite conspired to exterminate all the Jews on a single day, Mordecai sent word to Esther: she had to approach the king on behalf of her people, even though approaching uninvited was punishable by death. Mordecai's words are one of the great statements in all of Scripture about providence: "For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14). Esther called for three days of fasting and said, "If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4:16). She approached the king, was received, and in two orchestrated banquets exposed Haman's plot. Haman was hanged on the gallows he had built for Mordecai. The Jews were saved. The feast of Purim was established to commemorate the deliverance. Every Christian has a "for such a time as this." The question is whether we will say "if I perish, I perish" when it arrives.