When I look deep into my soul, when I'm really, really sad about stuff, usually what I find

is that I'm not sad about just one thing.

There's a collection of stuff.

Ironies, metaphors, narratives, past failures, things I tell myself, things I wish that

had happened, but that didn't, things that were good that I left undone, things that

were bad that I actively participated in, the weather being off my sports team playing

poorly.

I mean, it's snowballs, right?

When you're really, really down about stuff, everything can feed into that narrative.

Sometimes it's probably not justified, and that's just the dark parts of our mind or

soul or insecurity or self-doubt getting the best of us for a little bit.

Other times, maybe a good percentage of it is justified.

Maybe we really are in a down and miserable spot, a place like where we find Job in the

book that bears his name here a few pages over in the Bible from Esther that we're looking

at.

But when stuff is really genuinely bad, when you really, genuinely have deep heartache,

what I find is there's usually one big thing that is there that you can point to, but

there's a lot of little stuff and a lot of layers to that pain as well.

I think Mordecai, the Jew, would have been feeling a lot of layers to his pain and his

grief beyond the very obvious issue, which of course is Xerxes and Haman's edict that

all of the Jews are going to be killed in a matter of just months here as we get into

Esther chapter four.

...