It was a great national crisis, a most critical moment in their entire history.
While the individual who stood at the crossroads – faced with a desperate choice, with destiny or destruction dependent on their decision – would receive the preponderance of accolades, it was their foster parent, the one who raised them, who had prepared them for this hour.
Esther was an orphan raised by Mordecai as his foster-daughter.
Mordecai means “little man” but as the book ends that tells her story and bears her name, Mordecai looms large.
“He sought the good of his people,” is the final phrase in the final chapter and is his finest tribute given “the good of his people” was accomplished through the raising of this little girl.
And it was his step-mother, who entered his life at a most crucial time when he was but nine-years of age having lost his biological mom in a most untimely death, who Abraham Lincoln would affectionately call his “angel mother.”
Lincoln said of her that she was “his best friend in this world. No son could love a mother more than he loved her.”
Esther’s decision would demand piety, faith, and courage.
Lincoln’s date with destiny would demand honesty, compassion, and integrity.
And it can be rightly adjudged that it was through purposeful parenting that such virtues became the warp and the woof of the fabric of their character such that from these qualities and responsibilities neither Esther nor Lincoln “never evaded, never equivocated, never dodged.”
Both would become the individuals needed for their hour, lives resplendent against a backdrop of dark national need.
We’re there.
