Every year at Grace Chapel we celebrate the Feast of Purim. This feast, as described in the Book of Esther, celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from the threat of death at the hands of a wicked enemy. In the story, Esther becomes queen of Persia and is directed by the unseen hand of God into a position of royalty whereby she can affect the deliverance of the Jewish people. In the end, the Jews are delivered from destruction by being given the right to fight back against their enemies. As Christians, we celebrate the deliverance we have in Jesus Christ who has freed us from the fear of death (Heb 2:15) and given us the right to war by the spirit against the fiery darts of our enemy. (Eph 6: 13).

In Jewish tradition, Purim is celebrated by dressing in costumes while reading the story of Esther. One of the themes of the book of Esther is that nothing is as it seems. Esther, unbeknownst to the king, is a Jew; Haman (the villain) has a hidden agenda to kill the Jews; and God although He is leading each and every step, is never mentioned by name in the book of Esther.

This year, Purim fell on a chilly Saturday night, but the Grace Chapel family was determined to keep the feast and paid no mind to the weather. As we arrived in our costumes, we began the celebration with dinner and fellowship which was followed by a fantastic rendition of the story of Esther. For our celebration, the story was rewritten by one of our talented young adults to be told from Haman's point of view. While the story was recited everyone took great pleasure in cheering each time Esther's name was read, and making as much noise as possible by booing and rattling our noise makers to blot out every occurrence of the name of Haman. As the evening concluded, we went home with a renewed awareness and thankfulness for Jesus Christ for the cancellation of the decrees against us (Col 2:14).