esther 2026
season 06 | 02.05 | the monster fight
Why do people so often seem to become the thing that they started out despising? Maybe a tougher question: why do we? As Esther closes, we see the Jewish people, fresh off of the Great Reversal, begin to treat their enemies just as they had been treated in the past. They called it justice - but what Jesus describes as justice is far different.
season 06 | 02.04 | pay it forward
Zack tells a story about being trapped recently in one of those coffee drive-thru lines where the car in front of you pays for your order. The happy barista informed him of the good news and pleaded that I would continue the hour-long trend: his $3 coffee became a $17.52 coffee. Sometimes the decision to pay it forward costs more than we thought it might. Esther experienced this with stakes much more serious than a cup of coffee. The way she responds foreshadows Jesus as she provides care, comfort, and even freedom for her people.
season 06 | 02.03 | expect the unexpected
Most of us don’t tolerate uncertainty or the unexpected very well. The unknown tends to make us want to question God. Though what if we could learn to treat the unexpected not as a deviation from God’s character or proof of his distance, but as evidence of his involvement? Surprise is one of the ways we can trace his fingerprints across history. The pages of Esther are no different. Chapters 5-7 inspire us to keep hope even when we can’t understand what God is doing.
season 06 | 02.02 | esther: for such a time as this
If God is in control, do my choices really matter? As our story develops we find ourselves caught in this mysterious tension, wrestling with the relationship between God’s provision and our participation. When we neglect one or the other, we either fall into coercion and control or passivity and recklessness. Esther's story invites us to consider what it means to be faithful, to trust God with what only he can do while not shrinking back from what is only ours to do.
season 06 | 02.01 |esther: obedience, power, + pain
We kick off the book of Esther by re-evaluating the startling story that we see in the first few chapters. What do we say in the face of abusive power? How do we make sense of times when God seems absent? Esther has a lot to say about things past the normal conventions of women's conferences and kid's tales.