16For the Jews it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honor.
Sometime you just need to celebrate! Celebration can be a good thing. Life is not about all doom and gloom. God created joy and it part of His plan that we know how to enjoy life. Some Jesus-followers feel and teach that too much joy and happiness is a bad thing. With all the sorrow in the world, how can we be celebrating? In our text the Jews’ lives have just been spare, and at the last minute. Destruction was eminent. Only a miracle could stop this from engulfing the world. And that is exactly what God did. He stopped it. He used a very unlikely candidate to accomplish his purposes. Are you an unlikely person that the Lord might be able to use? Are you willing to be prepositioned as a forward asset in His kingdom, ready to be opened at a moment’s notice and used?
The Arnold Journey 