By Mary Beth Foust “Something was summoned inside of them when they had that argument. Bella’s class and her friends, something came out from inside of them.” - Ava I delight in taking my oldest to school on these days. It’s just me and her. Generally, she asks to control the music and we sing loudly to Hercules or Selah. This day, not unlike others, she is telling me a story about her children. The story of our quarantine together as a family in 2020 has been marked by the growth of her own imaginary family. She has three children and a husband, they go about daily life in her “hotel house” as she calls it. In this particular story, her middle child, “Bella” was caught in an argument at school and she used this phrase about something being summoned. It stops me even as she says it. It’s a clear sign we’ve been watching too much Frozen 2. Elsa looking fierce in Frozen 2In the plot of Frozen 2, Elsa, the eldest sister hears a voice calling to her. As she leans into the summons of this strange voice, a larger story of her family history and her personal power begin to unfold before her. She and her sister continue on their journey until a point at which Elsa realizes she has to keep going and leaves her sister to follow alone. In the song “Show Yourself” she sings this line: “I’ve never felt so certain, all my life I’ve been torn. But I’m here for a reason, could it be the reason I was born?…” This is a familiar sentiment to me. I’ve always had a general wandering spirit longing to know what good I am meant to do and be in this world. This same question that Elsa poses is a theme we find throughout the stories of many biblical characters. We are invited to catch a glimpse of wondering what it is that God is up to in this world. How could God use me in this story? And so, too do we find this same sentiment in the story of Esther. A book likely composed in many parts by a people longing to tell the story of how something came to be. They tell the story in exaggerated tones. The King is larger than life. The Persian people are materialistic and markedly different than the Jews. And somehow, a Jewish girl becomes queen, the king’s favorite, AND she can trick him to do whatever it is she wants. There is romance, there is drama, there is even violence in this story we so revere. And to what end? Because we seek out this overarching sentiment, this summons that is drawn from us: was I born for such a time as this? Our reality is, we may never fully know what God is up to in the world through us, but we can be assured that God is indeed up to something in spite of and because of our very making. We were born for this time and God is summoning something from deep inside of us out into the world. As we find those spaces and times for which we were created we claim for a moment that we are right where we need to be, a player in the ever unfolding drama of God’s love for us and for the world.
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