{"id":17720,"date":"2021-08-27T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/urc\/the-book-of-esther"},"modified":"2021-08-27T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T17:00:00","slug":"the-book-of-esther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/the-book-of-esther\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Esther"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Book of Esther<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dear Friends,<\/p>\n<p>I hope you enjoyed our read through 1 and 2 Peter and found that ancient wisdom useful for your lives of discipleship today.&nbsp; From tomorrow morning we will spend a few weeks reading through the Book of Esther.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em><span id=\"docs-internal-guid-6b868544-7fff-4f0c-8f73-e90ab0abbe18\">Esther&nbsp;<\/span><\/em><span id=\"docs-internal-guid-6b868544-7fff-4f0c-8f73-e90ab0abbe18\">relates the story of a Jewish woman in Persia. Born as Hadassah but known as Esther, she became queen of Persia and thwarted a genocide of her people. The story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice: once in the evening and again the following morning. The books of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The book is fast paced, appalling in its brutality in places and full of danger, intrigue and patriarchal figures that either make you want to laugh or cry.&nbsp; Women are central to the story but we see the ways in which they had to act in order to maintain their own safety.&nbsp; Eunuchs are ever present as bit part players that join in the palace plots.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Esther is a change of style from the material we&#8217;ve been reading, is very enjoyable and has much to offer us as we marvel at the political intrigue and plots in our own time.<\/p>\n<p>with every good wish<\/p>\n<p>Andy<\/p>\n<p>The Rev&#8217;d Andy Braunston,<br \/>Co-ordinator, Daily Devotions from the URC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Book of Esther Dear Friends, I hope you enjoyed our read through 1 and 2 Peter and found that ancient wisdom useful for your lives of discipleship today.&nbsp; From tomorrow morning we will spend a few weeks reading through the Book of Esther.&nbsp;&nbsp;Esther&nbsp;relates the story of a Jewish woman in Persia. Born as Hadassah &hellip; <\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/the-book-of-esther\/\" class=\"button more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Book of Esther&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitywimbledon.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}