In his book, The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner writes: "The question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or God’s things because, of course, they are both at once. There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak … He speaks, I believe, and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys … ‘Be not afraid, for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ He says he is with us on our journeys. He says he has been with us since each of our journeys began. Listen for him. Listen to the sweet and bitter airs of your present and your past for the sound of him.” Esther is a story of “chance" and “coincidence,” and my hope is that this morning, you might pay attention to the chances and coincidences that show up in your own life to participate in the work that God is doing there and for the life of the world! Levi SimpsonKGM Director of Spiritual Care