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      #19The Beauty Contest

"On the seventh day,

when the heart of the king was merry with wine,
he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha,
and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas,
the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the King, to bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to shew the people and the princes her beauty:
for she was fair to look on.
But
the queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment by his chamberlains:
                  therefore was the king very wroth,
                  and his anger burned in him."
                                               Esther 1:10-12
     BEAUTY contests are not primarily a thing of the present day. They had a few of them in the olden times also. However, on this occasion there was one lady who was not willing to parade herself and her beauty before the eyes of drunken men, even at the firm request of a king.
   It was not an ordinary thing for a person to flatly refuse the bidding of a king. Ahasuerus the king, and the husband of Vashti, had made a great and long feast. During the feast there was to be no holding back or abstaining from just exactly what the guests wanted to do. The king had appointed that all should do "according to every man's pleasure." Then at the conclusion of the feast, the king thought he would climax the affair by letting the queen come in to appear before the people. The king's heart was merry with wine and he cared little for virtue, modesty, the feelings of his own wife, or God. "But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment."
   We know very little concerning the life and character of Vashti, but the lesson from this portrayal of a Bible character is that she was a person who was willing to refuse the command of the king before she would yield to do something she knew to be wrong.
   And what a lesson that should be to us! If we are Christians, we should not yield to the command or desire of any one, if in doing so we would fail to be true to the King of kings and Lord of lords. The easy and convenient thing for the queen to have done would have been for her to have gone ahead and yielded to the command of Ahasuerus. Vashti was not looking for the easy thing to do, but for the right thing.

<><><> #20 - Where To Look <><><> #18 - Whosoever Wills and Whosoever Won'ts <><><>
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Evangelist and Pastor, Dr. Marvin Lewis