Just In Time

Just in Time

If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?

Esther 4:14

Many years ago, my aunt Delpha and uncle Jim and their three small children had just moved to a small cabin in the northern woods of Minnesota. They didn’t have running water yet, much less a phone.

Delpha and her brother Michael, who was visiting at the time, were at home late one evening when her husband’s uncle Rod came down from his place, which was a short ways away. He had received a phone call on Delpha’s behalf, and he hurried over to tell her the news. Her mother had experienced health problems for several years, and although she was only in her midforties, her recent bout with pneumonia had taken an unexpected turn.

“Your mother is dying,” he said. “If you want to see her, you need to go now.”

Delpha’s mother lived hundreds of miles away in North Dakota. Rod, recognizing that the young family might not have the funds to cover the cost of gas, gave her money to pay for the trip. She thanked Rod, and then Delpha and Michael drove all through the night back to North Dakota. They arrived in the morning just in time to see their mother in the hospital. She died that very day.

In the Old Testament story of Queen Esther, Esther is told by her relative Mordecai that perhaps she has been placed in a position of power “for just such a time as this”—specifically, when her people, the Jews, needed to be saved from death. Her circumstances gave her a unique advantage in helping others, but it was up to her to recognize and follow through on it.

Sometimes, God puts us in specific places or intersects our lives with others so that we can bless or encourage them at just the right moment. If Rod hadn’t visited Delpha that evening and provided the funds for the trip, the two siblings never would have made it in time to see their mom.

What kind act have you felt nudged to do? Perhaps the opportunity has been placed in your path for such a time as this.

—Kristin

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Whatever act of kindness you have felt led to do, stop putting it off and do it.