Night Travelers: Anxiety—Walking Anyway Esther 4:1-17
Night Travelers: Anxiety—Walking Anyway
Esther 4:1-17
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins
May 17, 2026
When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry; he went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one might enter the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth. In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes. When Esther’s maids and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed; she sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther, explain it to her, and charge her to go to the king to make supplication to him and to entreat him for her people. Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him a message for Mordecai: “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that, if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law: to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden scepter to someone may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.” When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.
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There is a particular kind of suffering that doesn’t announce itself with sirens.
It doesn’t arrive as a phone call in the middle of the night or a diagnosis written on a clipboard. It comes in the quiet — in the space between sleeping and waking, in the hollow hours of three in the morning when the house is still and your mind is not. It comes as a question you can’t answer and a future you can’t see and a feeling, formless and persistent, that something terrible is about to happen.
We call it anxiety.
And if you’ve ever lived inside it, you know it is one of the loneliest places on earth — because from the outside, nothing is wrong. From the outside, you are fine. From the outside, you are standing perfectly still. What no one can see is that on the inside, your fist is clenched around something you cannot name and cannot release, and you have been holding on so long your hand has gone numb.
Have you ever felt this way?
Brené Brown, in her book Atlas of the Heart, makes a distinction I find enormously helpful. She separates fear from anxiety — two emotions we tend to treat as synonyms, but which are doing very different things in us. Fear, Brown explains, is a response to a known, immediate, realistic threat. The car swerving into your lane. The shadow in the doorway. The diagnosis with a name. Fear is mobilizing — it sharpens us, focuses us, moves us toward action or away from danger. Fear, as we explored last week in this “Night Traveler” series, has a face.
Anxiety is different. Anxiety, Brown writes, is about uncertainty — it’s what happens when we project our dread onto a future we cannot see or control. Fear says this is happening. Anxiety says what if. And here is the cruelty of it: anxiety doesn’t need a real threat. It only needs an unresolved question. It feeds not on what is, but on what might be. And it is extraordinarily good at keeping us exactly where we are — hands clenched, breath shallow, waiting for a danger that may never arrive.
And in the face of our anxiety, we must find ourselves walking anyway.
Walking anyway . . . like Esther walking into the king’s inner court in today’s scripture lesson. Esther has been queen of Persia for several years when our story opens. She is young, she is beautiful, and she carries a secret: she is Jewish, a member of a people who were exiled to this foreign land. Her cousin Mordecai, who raised her after the death of her parents, has instructed her to keep this hidden. And she has. She has lived between two worlds, tending carefully to her Persian identity, surviving by concealment.
Then Haman — the king’s highest official, a man of petty cruelty and massive ego — issues a decree. All Jews in the Persian empire are to be annihilated. Every man, woman, and child. The date is set. The edict is sealed with the king’s ring.
Mordecai tears his clothes and puts on sackcloth and ashes. He wails in the city square. Word reaches Esther in the palace. She sends him fresh clothes — the clothes of the court, the clothes of the safe world she inhabits. He sends them back. He will not be comforted. He sends her instead the full text of the decree, and a message: Go to the king. Intercede for your people.
And Esther freezes.
She sends back her answer: “All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned, the king has but one law: that they be put to death. The only exception is for the king to extend the golden scepter — and I have not been summoned in thirty days.”
Read that carefully. This is not evasion. This is not cowardice. This is accurate threat assessment. Esther is describing her situation with complete clarity. The danger is real. The law is real. The thirty days of silence from the king — real. She can see exactly what approaching that throne might cost her.
And she cannot move.
This is what anxiety does. Brown is right — there is fear here, a known threat with a name. But there is also anxiety: the “what if” that has wound itself around Esther’s chest and will not release. What if I go and the king does not extend the scepter? What if my secret is exposed? What if my safety, my identity, everything I have held together by careful concealment, unravels in a single moment? Anxiety never asks what we were made for. Anxiety is too busy calculating the cost of moving.
Mordecai’s response cuts through it: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Not guilt. Not ultimatum. A question about identity and purpose. Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? You were placed here. You were made for this moment. The question anxiety never asks — because anxiety is too busy gripping to ask what our open hands might do.
This week, I was reminded of an illustration I shared with you a few years ago about a method African bushmen use to trap monkeys. They take some bait — some kind of food — and place it in a hole. The entrance to the hole is just large enough for the monkey to put his open hand through, but not large enough to pull his fisted hand out. So the unsuspecting monkey comes upon the hole with the treat inside, puts his hand through the small hole, grabs the treat — but he is unable to pull his hand out of the hole unless he drops the treat. The monkey is too stubborn to drop the treat. And there he will be when the monkey hunter comes back to check his traps. The monkey’s desire and stubbornness become his demise.
Even good things may entrap us when we refuse to let go of them.
Here is what I want you to notice: Esther was not clinging to something sinful. She was clinging to safety — a reasonable, earned, hard-won safety. The banana wasn’t poisoned. It was survival. It was the only identity she had managed to maintain in a foreign empire. And it had served her well for years.
But Esther’s grip might just get her people killed.
This is the particular cruelty of anxiety: it doesn’t require bad intentions. It only requires a fist that will not open. The monkey is not evil. He is simply unwilling to release what he has. And so he stands there, hand in the hole, waiting for a hunter he cannot see coming.
Walking anyway requires, first, an open hand.
Watch what Esther does next. She does not barrel through the king’s gate on adrenaline. She does not will herself into courage through sheer determination. She calls for a fast.
“Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law.”
Three days. No food. Her maidens around her, the Jewish community of Susa around her, all fasting together.
This is not delay. This is the practice of opening the hand.
The Catholic priest and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, in his book With Open Hands, describes two postures of prayer. The first is clenched fists — hands that protect what we already have, that keep us defended and armored, that cannot receive anything new because they are already full of what we refuse to release. The second is open palms — hands that have let go of what we’ve been gripping, hands that are empty enough, available enough, to receive what God might place in them.
Nouwen writes that prayer with open hands does two things simultaneously: it ensures we have let go, and it creates the posture to receive. You cannot do one without the other. The release and the receiving are the same motion.
The fast is Esther’s three-day practice of open hands. She is not summoning courage through discipline. She is releasing her grip — on safety, on hiddenness, on the outcome she cannot control — until her palms are open enough to walk through a door that might kill her.
This is what distinguishes walking anyway from recklessness. Recklessness charges forward without releasing anything — fists still full, ego still in charge, the banana still in hand. Walking anyway is the movement that follows the fast. It is the step taken by someone whose hands have finally opened.
On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes and walked into the king’s inner court.
Listen again to what she says: If I perish, I perish.
Not bravado. Not certainty. Not the absence of fear. This is the sound of open hands.
She has named the worst possible outcome — death — and walked toward it anyway. Not because she knows it won’t happen. Not because she has received a divine guarantee. But because she has spent three days releasing the need to know. The outcome is no longer in her fist. It is in God’s hands now, and her hands are free to move.
Think of Jesus in the garden. Sweating blood — or something very much like it — on the night before his execution. He could have walked away. He had options. He knew the terrain. But in the agony of that garden, he prayed essentially the same prayer Esther practiced in her fast: Not my will but yours be done. Not the will of ego. Not the will of the self that grips and calculates and refuses to let go. Not my will but yours be done. Open hands, in the dark, in the garden, on the last night.
Walking anyway looks like Esther in her royal robes. It looks like Jesus in Gethsemane. It looks like you, walking toward the thing you cannot guarantee, with your palms open and your feet moving.
Brené Brown distinguishes fear from anxiety. What Esther feels walking into that throne room is almost certainly fear now — there is a known threat, and it has a face. But the anxiety — the paralyzing “what if” that kept her fist closed for days — has been converted by three days of open hands. Esther’s anxiety is not converted to certainty. Esther’s anxiety is not converted to the absence of dread. Esther’s anxiety has morphed into availability. She is available to whatever God places in her open palms.
Do you want to know what happens when Esther approached the king, illegally, in his inner court, without being summoned? The king extends the golden scepter.
Esther walks anyway. And she lives.
Six weeks ago we began this “Night Traveler” journey together—walking headfirst into the emotions we most dread and often try to avoid.
· We have traveled with our anger and found that holy fire burns without consuming.
· We have traveled with our rage and found that righteous disruption can be sacred.
· We have traveled with our shame and found that the hiding place is where God already lives.
· We have traveled with our sorrow and found that grief is simply the price of love.
· We have traveled with our fear and found that the dark is not empty.
Today we travel with our anxiety and this is what we find:
The hands that release what we’ve been gripping are the same hands that receive what God has been holding for us.
The monkey trap only works if the monkey keeps his fist closed. The moment he opens his hand, he is free.
I wonder what you might be holding onto that’s keeping you from receiving what God has in store for you? What “what if” is it time to release, that you might walk anyway, head first into God’s deeper will for your life?
I want to close today a little differently. I want to close today with a prayer. You are invited to—if you feel comfortable doing so—you are invited to pray as Father Nouwen encourages—you are invited to pray with open hands. If you would like to try this, simply place your hands in your lap and turn your palms upward—not as performance, but as practice. As a physical act of what we’re asking God to do in us. Now let us pray:
Gracious God —
We come to you this morning as night travelers who have made it through.
We have carried anger, and you did not flinch from it. We have carried rage, and you showed us it could be holy. We have carried shame in our hiding places, and we have found you already there. We have carried sorrow, and you wept with us. We have carried fear into the dark, and discovered the dark was full of you.
And now we bring you this — our anxiety. Our clenched fists. The things we have been gripping so long we have forgotten we are holding them.
We hold onto safety when you are calling us into risk. We hold onto certainty when you are inviting us into trust. We hold onto who we have been when you are making us into who we are becoming. We hold onto outcomes we cannot control, and call it wisdom, when really it is fear.
But today—today we open our hands.
Not because we are brave. Not because we are certain. Not because we know how the story ends. But because Esther put on her royal robes and walked anyway. Because Jesus knelt in a garden and said not my will but yours be done. Because the night travelers before us found that the only way through the dark is through — and that we do not go alone.
Receive what we have been holding. Give us what we cannot give ourselves. And send us out from this place with open hands and moving feet — walking anyway, into whatever you have placed us here for, for such a time as this.
Amen.