In the Beauty of His Holiness

Our adult Sunday school class is study­ing the Book of Esther this sum­mer, and God is expos­ing truths this eager learner has never seen before. For instance, He said one key to under­stand­ing the ancient story is sim­ply to accept that the king of the 127 provinces of Media/Persia is sov­er­eign. His laws are absolute. His posi­tion is immutable. His ways are past find­ing out. Sound famil­iar? The stu­dent of the Word must sim­ply accept that the king made the deci­sion to depose his queen Vashti. It was his choice accord­ing to the times, the cus­toms and the set­ting. We don’t get to judge whether he was right or wrong, nor does it pro­mote the over­all entente to ask why! In the story, the king typ­i­fies our God and King. And it helps to see King Ahasuerus in that light.

On the other hand, the sym­bol­ism behind Esther’s beauty baths punc­tu­ates the key ele­ments of a Christian’s rela­tion­ship with our Lord. If you will recall the story, when the queen was ban­ished for fail­ing to bring glory to her monarch, every vir­gin in the vast king­dom was brought to the palace for a year’s prepa­ra­tion to spend one night with the king. He was to choose the next reign­ing queen from these “con­tes­tants.” Each young lady, Esther among them, under­went beauty treat­ments with six months of baths in the oil of myrrh and six more in baths of fra­grant oils.

Now, myrrh is a spice used in Bible times pri­mar­ily for prepar­ing a cadaver for bur­ial. That hardly seems the aura for prepar­ing for the “date” of a life­time! But it was, as is bap­tism for the Believer, the first step in the approach to the king—death to self, the wash­ing away of all that came before that one may be pre­sented in the new­ness of life. That new­ness was ampli­fied by the fra­grances that would make a girl mem­o­rable. In like man­ner, we are to bring the “sweet savour of Christ” wher­ever we go.

While van­ity is scorned in much of the Bible, we all would do well to indulge our­selves in beauty treat­ments sim­i­lar to Esther’s.  Scripture speaks of wor­ship­ing Him “in the beauty of His holi­ness.”  The invi­ta­tion is to us, as it was to Esther—to enter into that beauty. To be holy as He is holy.