🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

My husband and I have the unique privilege of gathering with missionaries around the world. This week, we were on a call with our friends serving the deaf in Jamaica, internationals and locals in Haiti, the church in Europe, community development in Northern Africa, and the front lines of the war in Israel. We celebrated baptisms, breakthroughs and the ways God keeps showing up for our families. We supported one another over the inglorious strains of living abroad and raising children in foreign countries.

I was struck by each family's unique passions as we shared ministry updates. Our friends representing the Caribbean said,"There are 70 million deaf people in the world and 98% of them are unreached." Another has gone to unfathomable lengths to reach people in countries not open to Christianity. I marveled, "What did God orchestrate in each of their stories to get them there?"

It made me think of an orphan's story in the book of Esther. It's presumably full of events she wouldn't have chosen, including becoming queen in a foreign land and hiding her Jewish heritage. Her story is not romantic or spiritual. In fact, God is not mentioned and wasn't an obvious part of life in a book full of drinking, sex and murder.

The Jewish people are in grave danger at the climax of Esther's story. Her cousin Mordecai invites her to consider if each step of her journey had led her to this very moment. The orphan queen used her sovereignly unique voice to be a part of God's redemption promise being fulfilled on earth as it is in heaven.

God isn't deterred by ungodly stories. He sent His Son to redeem them. He allows our stories, with all their bends and breaks, to participate in the fulfillment of His promises.

It has to make you wonder with Mordecai, "...who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"(Esther 4:14) Worship wherever you are. God is there.

Listen to Maverick City Music's "The Story I'll Tell".