A Kingdom of Vashti’s

“…that Vashti is never again to come before King Ahasuerus.” Esther 1:19

A drunken king demanded his beautiful wife to sashay herself amongst his merry making cronies during a royal palace party. Some theologians believe she was asked to appear wearing only her crown. Nevertheless, the queen’s refusal outraged her husband and all the men at his side. If Vashti’s “no” slipped by unpunished, all women might perceive disrespect as the new norm allowed in marriage. So Queen Vashti was banished from the presence of her husband forever. Where she took flight is left to the reader’s imagination. Nary is heard another word from the demoted Queen. A beautiful woman named Esther replaced her. God made beautiful what men devised as evil. He always does.

What happened to Vashti? What happens to all the Vashti’s who are disregarded in life? Some graduate from the school of adversity with flying colors, others do not. Relationships get messy. Some folks learn to work through their differences. Others resort to alternate solutions: give in or give up, fight or flight, and some wind up like Vashti – off the radar, never heard from again. Curiosity leads me to conclude various endings for the woman who left her crown and her presence at the castle’s door on the day of her banishment. Did she find someone else to love her? Or sit on an ash heap weeping until the day of her death? Was she pitied or ridiculed?

My own experience of rejection discerned each story has its own conclusion. Sitting at the back of a “Single Again” class I saw male and female Vashti’s. Rejection wears many faces. Divorce takes place in relationships other than marriage. Parents and children, siblings, best friends, business partners, neighbors…. Rifts, divisions, exclusions – all amount to pain, arrows to the heart. How does one recover?

Colossians 2:10 states “in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority.” Only Christ can make us complete. Another person brings happiness, wisdom, guidance and a plethora of emotions to a relationship. However, no person can be expected to fulfill every longing. A requirement of such demand is costly, painful, and generally winds up in the kingdom of Vashti’s.

Getty and Townsend penned these lyrics in a worship song “IN CHRIST ALONE”:

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

For all the Vashti’s banished from a relationship, only the love of God will complete you, enable you to stand, bring hope to your heart, and comfort you through the fiercest of storms. Hold tight to Him.

He is enough.