The streets are filled with music again.
Every year when Adar arrives, it’s as if the city forgets the weight of winter and remembers joy. Children run with masks and crowns, laughter spilling into alleyways like water into dry ground. The poor receive gifts, the widows share feasts, and strangers become family around shared bread.
And I — well, I sit at the edge of it all.
Older now.
Slower.
But still watching.
Some still call me “the man at the king’s gate.” Others, “the one who wore the royal robe.”
But I am simply Mordecai.
The son of Jair.
The father of Hadassah.
The servant of the living God.
She Still Walks These Halls
Esther still walks the palace halls, graceful as ever.
The weight of what she did has not left her — but neither has it burdened her.
She wears peace like a garment now.
The kind only known by those who stepped into fire and came out not smelling of smoke.
We speak often — rarely of the past.
There is no need.
We lived it.
We carry it in our bones.
And we see its fruit in every generation that laughs without fear.
The Scroll and the Child
This morning, a boy asked me to read the scroll.
He handed it to me like a sacred relic.
He did not know that I helped write it.
I smiled, opened it, and began to read.
“And Mordecai recorded these events… and sent letters to all the Jews…”
He interrupted me.
“Were you that Mordecai?”
I looked at him — eyes wide, breath still — and I said,
“I am.”
He grinned like he had found a treasure.
And in that moment, I realized:
I am not remembered because I was great.
I am remembered because I was faithful.
A People Who Still Stand
We still live in exile.
The temple has not yet been rebuilt.
But we are not forgotten.
We are seen. We are named.
We are preserved.
Not because of me.
Not even because of Esther.
But because of the God who hides in plain sight — in royal halls, in restless nights, in orphaned girls, in old men at the gate.
And because He still writes stories through people who say yes.
So let them read. Let them sing. Let them laugh until their voices rise higher than the gallows ever stood.
Because we were meant to die…
But we lived.
Because one girl stood up…
And all of us still stand.
