3.221 Don't Stand By

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve. I'm back!

Can you guess which one I am? You got it! I am Hope, and I'm back to share a message with you from Esther.

Esther has always been one of my favorites because it's always like, yeah, go girls! Yeah, she did it! She saved the people!

Woohoo! You know, that kind of thing. And so I've always like loved Esther's story and her courage that she has.

But as I was reading this time around, something else caught my attention. And so that's what I want to share with you today. We are finishing up this week in Esther.

All of it. I'm going to get our verse for today from Esther chapter 8. So we skipped a few chapters there, but don't tell my dad.

Anyway, so I'm going to share a little bit of backstory just real quick. So Esther has gone in with the banquet and everything and has pretty much like told the king that Haman was the one trying to kill her people and that she is a Jew. And so Haman, or as we used to say as kids, my dad would go, "Hey, man." So that's how you can remember that he's the bad guy.

Say it like that. But anyway, so he has gotten hanged, and so he's out of the picture now. And the king has gone back to Esther and said, "Okay, what else can I do for you?

What else is your request? Like, just tell me," or like, "Tell me more about like, why did you do this?" And so this is where verse six comes in. And so verse six says this: "For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people?

Or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?" So this verse in modern terms is pretty much, "How could I stand by and do nothing? Watch my people perish and die and do nothing?" And so that got me thinking about maybe just not necessarily the destruction of our neighbors and our best friends, but some little things like, oh, my friend over here, I'm watching them get cyberbullied or something, and I'm just sitting here watching it. You can do something about that.

You know, you don't have to ask for the government and get it involved that way. No, you don't really have to do that. But you can do something simple like stand up for your friend.

Or, let's say someone's having a super hard day, and instead of teasing on that day, like you might normally do, you can go up to them and give them a hug or give them some words of encouragement. Maybe find some inspiration. What I'm saying is Esther here, she said, "I saw that my people were going to be bullied pretty much, but like a very extreme way of bullied." And she knew she could do something about it.

And she did. And so if we see that we can do something about it, we should. We shouldn't just stand by and let it happen.

Do something about the things you see going on around you. My dad always said that "we are given choice for a reason and doing nothing is a choice." So, thank you, Dad. Shout out to my dad.

Doing nothing is a very big choice. So you may say, "Oh, I don't want to get involved with it," which some things, yes, there are out of your control. And if you do nothing, that is a choice.

And you may say, "Well, no, it's not because I didn't actually do anything." But yes, you chose not to do something. So don't stand by and do nothing when you know you can do something. Thank you for watching. Thanks for watching!