Today is the 18th day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's great to be here with you today. As we do what we do right throw open the threshold and step into a

brand new shiny sparkly week together we only get to do this 50 to 52 times a

year this is one of those times but we get 52 fresh

starts to a new week as we navigate a year and if we keep breaking down, we get a fresh start 365 times a year.

And if we break that down, we got a lot of minutes and a lot of moments. And we get a lot of minutes and moments and we get a lot of grace and a lot of mercy. So as we

greet a brand new week we just recognize this is this is out in front of us

Today tomorrow the next day the next day the next day all the way through this week

We're gonna tell the story

It's a good idea to choose in advance the posture

that we're going to enter the week with

because that's what's going to inform everything that we do and say. So one of the ways that we inform that posture is through allowing the

scriptures to speak into our lives. So we've got a brand new week. We also have a

brand new book. We concluded the book of Nehemiah yesterday. We haven't concluded the stories that come from exile, and that brings us today

to a brand new book, a beautiful book, The Book of Esther. It's short, it's in its length, but it's long and its drama and intrigue.

Esther will tell us of a young Hebrew girl named Hadassah and she was orphaned while in exile in Persia.

And so she's one of the people that like lost her parents, lost her family, like broken apart in the exile.

And so she was taken in and raised as a daughter by her cousin, and his name is Mordececai and he was of the tribe of

Benjamin. And so these exiled Hebrews who are like displaced and put all over

the empire often would take like a localized name to begin to fit in and so Hadassa was given

the name Esther and Esther translates as Star or mourning star in Hebrew tradition.

We know from the scriptures that Esther is stunningly beautiful in her appearance

and that she possessed a quiet character.

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