31. Dear Vashti (Letters from God / Fictional letters based on people in the Bible)

Dear Vashti,

     You were the wife King Xerxes. He has divorced you and you were sent away never to be in his presence again. You are a very beautiful woman and I understand why you did not want to be paraded around in front of a group of men like a mere possession. Yet you did not address this quietly between your husband and yourself. You publicly refused him and in doing this you caused him shame. For if he was not seen as the head of his own household how could he have been seen to rule over a kingdom.

      He was both your husband and your king and you did not submit to him. It is not that he was right in his actions in how he treated you, but your reaction humiliated him as well. You did not act in a way that a wife should, and there is no excuse for doing wrong because another does so. Two wrongs do not make anything right.

     There were other ways that you could have let him know how you felt about how he was treating you. A wife should never correct her husband publicly, but quietly in private. Just as if one brother sees another sin, he does not go up to the one who is sinning and point it out for all to see, but he quietly approaches him and talks with him in private so that the other is not shamed into having to defend himself. Then he can repent of his actions because he was corrected in love.

      As his wife you should have stood by his side. You enjoyed the luxuries of being a queen but you did not appreciate the one who made you queen. You did not try to bring peace into your home. You caused strife, and it is you who is now paying the price. It is said, that it is better for a man to sit on the corner of the roof of his house than inside with a woman who chooses to argue constantly. When a wife speaks, she should do so to bring peace, comfort, life, and love.

      The conversations you had had before this event know one else knows about, but your actions tell me that they were lacking in love. If you had felt that you were loved you may not have reacted in such a disrespectful way. I hope that you do not live out the rest of your life bitter towards Xerxes, but learn to love and to be loved. My instruction is that you look upon yourself before you look upon how another is behaving. Live and learn.

Love,

Lord God Almighty

Read

Esther chapter 1 / 2:1

Proverbs 21:9

Matthew 18:15-17