Come Follow Me & Family History: Esther

Where is God?

There is something unusual about the book of Esther.

God is never explicitly mentioned.

There is no dramatic appearance from an angel. No prophet delivering a message from the Lord. No voice from heaven telling Esther what she should do next.

And yet, when you read Esther's story, it is difficult not to see the hand of the Lord throughout it.

Esther just happens to become queen.

Mordecai just happens to overhear a plot against the king.

His good deed just happens to be recorded.

The king just happens to be unable to sleep on the very night he needs to be reminded of what Mordecai had done.

Again and again, circumstances come together at exactly the right time.

God may not be named in Esther's story, but His hand can be seen throughout it.

And I wonder how often the same is true of our own family stories.

I think about my Nan. Toward the end of her life, she was able to fly from England to spend Christmas with our family. At the time, we couldn't have known that she would pass away the week before Christmas, but it was filled with blessings, miracles and tender mercies from the Lord.

Her father drove buses through London during World War II. I can only imagine what those years must have been like. Yet he survived them. He came home. He raised his family. Generations came after him, including me.

And then there are stories where the hand of the Lord is much harder to see. My three-times-great-grandmother Mary Ann spent approximately thirty years, on and off, in a mental hospital. I don't look at her story and try to explain away the suffering. I don't know why she experienced what she did. I don't know where God was in every moment of those thirty years. But I believe He knew Mary Ann. I believe He saw her when others may have overlooked her. I believe her story mattered to Him then, just as it matters to Him now. And generations later, one of her descendants knows her name.

I have the privilege of going to the temple and participating in ordinances on behalf of the people who came before me. People who may never have heard the restored gospel during their lives. People whose stories I understand only in fragments. People whose relationship with God I may know nothing about. But they were always known to Him.

What if being "reserved for such a time as this" isn't only about what we're going to accomplish in our own lifetime? What if part of the reason we are here now is because of what is possible for the generations who came before us? We live in an extraordinary time for family history. Records that once required traveling across the world can be searched from home. Photographs and documents can be preserved digitally. Families separated across generations can be reconstructed. Names can be prepared for temple ordinances. And perhaps some of the people who came before us were always going to need descendants who lived for such a time as this.

The book of Esther never explicitly names God.

And yet, I see Him everywhere in the story.

Maybe family history invites us to do the same.

To look again at the ordinary moments.

The journeys that somehow happened.

The dangers our ancestors survived.

The prayers that may never have been written down.

And even the painful chapters where His presence is much harder for us to understand.

We may never know exactly how the Lord worked in the lives of those who came before us.

But we know He knew them.

He knew my Nan.

He knew her father as he drove his bus through wartime London.

He knew Mary Ann during those long years when so much of her life was spent within the walls of a hospital.

And He knows me.

Perhaps that is part of why we have been reserved for such a time as this.

To find them.

To remember them.

To preserve their stories.

To perform sacred ordinances on their behalf.

And, as we look back across the generations, to begin recognizing that the hand of the Lord has been there all along.

ACTIVITY: Can You See His Hand?

Esther never explicitly mentions God, yet as we read her story, we can see evidence of His hand throughout it. What happens when we look at our own family stories in the same way?

Choose one ancestor or family member and find a story from their life.

You could:

• Read a memory on FamilySearch.
• Look through an old journal.
• Ask a grandparent to tell you a story.
• Look through photographs together.
• Choose a family story you've heard many times.

After reading or hearing the story, talk about what you noticed.

Look at Your Own Story: Where have you seen the Lord's hand in your own life? and/or What is happening in your life right now that you might recognize differently when you look back someday?

This week, look for His hand.

When something happens that reminds you Heavenly Father is aware of your family, write it down. It may seem ordinary today, but someday it could become one of the stories your children or grandchildren look back on and recognize that God was in your story, too.

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