A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4).
A pastor once spoke about an unusual covenant he had made. He vowed to go ahead and cry whenever tears welled up in his eyes, even if he was in public and his natural instinct would be to hold tears back.
Because tears are a sign of weakness and vulnerability, we tend to hold them in. There are, however, times when it is appropriate to cry. Mordecai understood this. In a city known for its parties, his loud, public weeping was a bold statement.
He had heard about Haman’s plan to wipe out the Jewish race, and he responded appropriately. We read in Esther 4:1, “Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry.”
The Jewish people’s brokenness stands in contrast to the picture of the opulent feasting that opens this story. Esther 4:3 says, “In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.”
The Jewish people would soon experience true feasting, more joyful than the Persians had seen. However, this was a time for fasting and tears. They displayed the type of humility appropriate for a group that had been exiled because of their sin.
When is the last time these people had mourned and wept and fasted? God used pressure and the threat of persecution to help them see the wickedness of the culture they’d gotten used to. God wants to purify His people. God wants to remind them that they don’t fit in this culture. God wants to bring His people to repentance.
