Esther and Job, to me, are perfectly positioned in our Bibles. I consider it no coincidence that they are side by side, for both books say something significant about the nature and presence of evil. In Esther, we read about the conflict external, the battle that goes on around us...

Esther found herself on the inside, a girl of beauty dropped into the midst of a political storm. Her parents dead, she had become the ward of her uncle Mordecai. She and her uncle were Jews living in the Medo-Persian empire, a massive conglomeration of 127 territories that stretched from...