The Night Everything Changed
There are moments in a man’s life when he feels the world shifting beneath his feet.
Sometimes it’s loud — an announcement, a decree, a battle cry. Other times, it happens in the quiet — in a night when a king cannot sleep.
I did not know it then. I was still in sackcloth, still fasting, still waiting at the gate. But while I mourned outside the palace, God stirred something inside it.
A Scroll in the Stillness
The king, restless in the dead of night, called for the royal records — chronicles that recorded every act, every word, every whisper of loyalty or rebellion.
A servant unrolled the scrolls and began to read. And then… my name.
The plot I had once uncovered. The lives I had helped save. The moment I thought had been forgotten.
It had been written down.
Not rewarded. Not remembered. Just recorded.
Until now.
A Timely Question
The king sat up.
“What honor or recognition has been given to Mordecai for this?” he asked.
The servant replied, “Nothing has been done for him.”
Nothing.
But now — something was about to be.
And the timing? Divine.
Because as the king was asking how to honor me,
Haman was entering the courtyard with plans to have me hanged.
A Question with a Trap
The king called Haman in, unaware of his intentions. And in his own blindness, the king asked a dangerous question:
“What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?”
And Haman — blinded by his own pride — answered with the kind of fantasy only arrogance could imagine:
“Let him wear a royal robe the king has worn, ride the horse the king has ridden, and let a noble prince lead him through the city shouting, ‘This is what is done for the man the king delights to honor!’”
Haman was, of course, thinking of himself.
He saw the horse. The robe. The parade.
He heard his name in every echo.
But then came the blow.
“Go at once,” the king said, “Get the robe and the horse, and do just as you have suggested for Mordecai the Jew who sits at the king’s gate. Do not neglect anything you have recommended.”
The Honor I Didn’t Want
I knew none of this until the next morning.
But when I heard the commotion and looked up from my place,
I saw him.
Haman.
Holding the king’s horse.
His face like stone. His steps like thunder.
He did not bow. He did not smile.
He spoke the required words, each one laced with venom.
“This is what is done for the man the king delights to honor.”
I said nothing. I felt no triumph.
I hadn’t asked for this. I hadn’t sought it.
But I knew — God had remembered.
The Parade of Irony
It was a strange thing — to be robed and praised by the very man who built gallows for your death.
But I walked with dignity, not for my sake, but because I represented a people who were still under threat.
And I wondered:
Was this honor a turning point… or just an intermission?
Because Haman may have walked beside me in public,
but I knew — he still burned inside.
This humiliation would not be the end of his wrath.
A Cracked Foundation
By evening, the robe was returned. The horse led back to the stables. I went home quietly. No celebrations. No wine. No boasting. Just prayer.
And Haman?
He went to his house, head covered, heart raging.
Even his wife — Zeresh — and his advisers began to see it.
“If Mordecai, before whom your downfall has started, is of Jewish origin,” they told him, “you cannot stand against him. You will surely come to ruin.”
A rare moment of clarity in a house built on pride.
And as they were still speaking, the king’s eunuchs arrived, summoning Haman to Esther’s second banquet.
Unseen, Unstoppable
I would not be there, of course. The banquet was behind royal walls. But I sensed it.
The wheel had turned.
What had been hidden was about to be revealed. What had been plotted in darkness was about to be judged in the light.
And I, Mordecai, the Jew who sat at the gate — I had lived to see the hand of God move, not in fire or wind, but in the restlessness of a king.
