Got Secrets?

Do you have secrets? Things of which you don't speak; you'd rather not have anyone talk about them? If you're a card-carrying human being, you probably do. They can be light-weight, silly things we hide, like being a rugby player who secretly likes opera. Or they can be serious matters, such as hiding an addiction or a crippling phobia. Sometimes we work hard to hide the things of which we don't speak, for fear of risking ridicule, a damaged reputation, compromised power and influence, the loss of relationships, or even risk to life and limb.

There's a story about a powerful woman who kept a powerful secret. Several centuries before the birth of Jesus, the ruler of the Persian empire (known as Xerxes or Ahasuerus, depending on your source) chose as his queen a beautiful woman names Hadassah or Esther. (Seems like everybody had two names in Persia then!) Esther was an orphan, basically raised by a kinsman named Mordecai. (Only name I know of for him.) At some point, Mordecai incurred the wrath of a high ranking official in Ahasuerus' court named Haman. (Okay, not everybody in the Persian empire went by two names!) Anyway, Haman engineered things so that the king decreed that all of Mordecai's people should be exterminated because of disrespect for the empire. Modecai was a Jew; there were many still left in Persia. Obviously Esther was also a Jew, but she had kept her ethnicity a secret. As queen, she might be able to approach her husband, the king, and seek for a reversal of the edict. That, however, would reveal her own secret, and how would he react to that?

Secrets. Tough to protect them. Some of us say that the one known as Jesus knows all about us and passionately seeks us anyway. If the Church is the Body of Christ, should that Body be a place where any secret may be revealed and the one doing the revealing would be not only safe, but embraced? Not many places like that in the world...I'll see you around the next bend in the river.