The Night the King Couldn't Sleep

Behind his house, a wicked man named Haman had built a tall, terrible gallows. He built it for one reason. He wanted to hang a good man named Mordecai. And he wanted to hurt all of God's people, every family of them, far from home in the land of Persia.

And it looked like Haman was going to win.

Sometimes the bad guy seems too big and too strong, and you wonder if anyone is watching out for you at all.

But someone was watching. Even though no one could see him.

That very night, the king could not sleep. He turned one way, then the other, fluffed his pillow, and stared at the dark ceiling. Sleep would not come.

So the king said, "Bring me the big, dusty book where we write down everything that happens in the kingdom. Surely that will put me to sleep."

The servant opened the book to one page. Out of all the pages in all the world, to this one. And it said that long ago, Mordecai had saved the king's life, and nobody had ever said thank you.

The king sat straight up in bed.

In the morning, who should come walking in but Haman, all puffed up, ready to ask if he could hang Mordecai on that tall, terrible gallows.

But the king spoke first. "Haman," he said, "there is a man I want to honor. What should I do for him?"

Haman smiled to himself. Surely the king means me, he thought. So he described the grandest parade, the finest robe, the king's own horse.

"Wonderful," said the king. "Now go and do every bit of it. For Mordecai."

Oh, how Haman's face fell.

That night there was a banquet, and Queen Esther, who had once walked to the king's throne uninvited to save her people, stood up at the table and told the king everything. Haman wanted to destroy her people. Her people. The king's own queen.

And the gallows that Haman built for Mordecai?

That was the very place Haman met his end.

The trap snapped shut on the one who set it. The weapon turned around in the wicked man's own hands. And the people who thought they were forgotten had been held all along by a hand they could not see.

There is not one verse in this story that says the name of God. Not one. And yet he is on every page, awake all night, turning a dusty book to just the right place, guarding every single one of his children in that faraway land until the day he would lead them home.

And one day, far down the road, there would be another wicked plan, and another terrible wooden thing built to kill. A cross. The worst weapon anyone ever made.

But the hidden hand was there too. And he would take even that, the very worst thing, and turn it all the way around into the rescue of the whole world.