Occasionally, but very rarely, life delivers moments that clearly feel monumental, even providential.

It's as though God orchestrated all the key elements, like stars lining up in the skies,

and something dramatic occurs that changes history forever.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall describes one such moment.

In his biographical study of Esther, he'll show us how this woman of strength and dignity

walked hand in hand with destiny.

Chuck is teaching from the first and second chapter of the book that bears her name,

and he titled today's message,

There She Goes, Miss Persia.

God not only moves in unusual ways, he also moves, I'm convinced, on uneventful days.

I think he is just as involved in the mundane events as he is in the miraculous. I believe his hand is in it all. Let me illustrate from the scriptures a perfect example of an unknown young woman whose life

had nothing to do with the events we're going to spend our time looking at

for the next number of minutes. And yet in God's tapestry, he was weaving together an unknown

orphaned young woman into the life of the most powerful man in the Persian Empire. My Bible is open to one of the most

least read sections of the scriptures, the book of Esther. Like the story begins, now it took place

in the days of Ahasuerus, the same one who reigned from India to Ethiopia,

over 127 provinces. He gave a banquet. Now there's nothing new about banquets in nobility.

That's common standard operating procedure. He gave a banquet, however, that was like no other banquet. Observe the size of it.

It was for all his princes and attendants, army officers of Persia, so there was military brass as well as nobility,

the nobles and the princes of his provinces being in his presence, when he displayed the riches

of his royal glory and the splendor of his great majesty for many days. Now look, 180 days. We're talking six months

of banqueting. He invited, however, another group and a larger group to a second banquet on the heels of the

...