My Sister Queen, You Were Created for This by Charryse Wright

Scripture:  Esther 4:14  For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, 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.”

My Sister Queen, You Were Created for This!

In 2016, there was a movie released called Hidden Figures starring Taraji P. Henson who plays Katherine Johnson, Octavia Spencer who plays Dorothy Vaughn and Janelle Monae who plays Mary Jackson. Hidden Figures tells the untold story of these three inspiring and phenomenal Black women who were instrumental for their work in mathematics and Mary Jackson in engineering at Langley Research Center in 1960’s segregated Hampton, Virginia. 

The movie opens with young Katherine’s parents meeting with school officials while she waits, naming geometric shapes in a stained glass while.  The official wants to send Katherine to a school for gifted students as she is a genius in math.  However, the only school for “colored” students starts at sixth grade and Katherine is only eight, so she will have to skip several grades and her family will have to move for her to attend.  This worries her parents, but they agree it will be best for her and her teachers share a collection they have taken up for the family to help with expenses. At the new school, a teacher asks Katherine to tackle an algebra problem on the blackboard. Eight-year-old Katherine solves the problem with no hesitation and then turns around and explains it to her teenage classmates.

The movie then goes to an adult Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary as they are heading to work, where their car breaks down.  A white cop comes over and begins harassing them until they explain that they work for NASA in the space testing department. He becomes fascinated by these Black women and their ability to help send a white man to space and he offers to give them a ride, they turn it down and he escorts them sirens on to Langley Research Center.  Here we see these women work as human computers in the gender and racially segregated  West Computers Division. It is an open space that houses these brilliant black women mathematicians until they are summoned to assist certain departments with ensuring the successful completion of getting the space shuttle around the earth.

These remarkable women should be honored. During the month of March, we honor women- all women. But I would like to take the time to speak to my women of substance.

·         Being a woman of substance means you don’t settle for mediocrity and we live in a world where mediocrity is celebrated.  

·         Being a woman of substance means you stand up and fight for what is right no matter the cost.

·         Being a woman of substance means you walk in integrity, love, strength, faith, honesty, wisdom and confidence.

·         Being a woman of substance means you may feel alone and misunderstood, but God will always send someone that understands and believes in you.

Looking in the Bible, we see many stories of women of substance and the story of Esther is no different. Let’s do a quick overview of Esther. King Xerxes summoned his wife Queen Vashti to show off her beauty to during an elaborate 180-day party. The Queen refused and in anger with advice from his ministers’, the King had her banished. Let me pause here because this does something to my spirit – Queen Vashti was banished because she didn’t feel like putting on for the King and his friends. They had been partying for a week, I believe Vashti had taken off her bra, Spanx, makeup, lashes and wrapped her hair to sit back and enjoy some much needed and deserved relaxation and because the King and his boys were offended because she exercised her right to say NO, she was discarded like trash and ALL women were told about it, to put fear in them to keep them from having their own opinions.  Just think about that, I am going to move on because this is not my topic for the day.  As time passed and his anger subdued, Xerxes missed Vashti, but it was too late, and his decision was permanent.  His ministers recommended that the King hold a beauty contest for all the young virgins in his kingdom and whomever pleased him, would become Queen. Amongst the beautiful & shapely young virgins was Hadassah also known as Esther.  Her cousin and guardian Mordecai told the orphan to not let anyone know that she was Jewish because the Jews had been sent into exile by King Nebuchadnezzar.  Immediately upon entering the harem, Esther found favor amongst Hegai, who was in charge of the harem.  She received special food, beauty treatments, the best support team and was moved to the best place inside the harem.  Mordecai outside of the gates of the harem monitored Esther closely.  

Before the young women were sent to the King, they received a year worth of beauty treatments and were allowed to take anything they wanted from the harem to the king’s palace.  She would spend the night with the King and in the morning return to the area as a concubine. She would only return to the king if she was summoned because she pleased him. When Esther’s turn came, she only took what Hegai recommended and she found favor amongst everyone who saw her including the king and he set a crown on her head and made her queen.

While sitting at the gate, Mordecai overheard a plot to assassinate the king. Mordecai told Queen Esther and she informed the King. The report was founded to be true and the men were executed.  King Xerxes honored Haman because of these events. The King commanded everyone to bow to Haman and all did except Mordecai because he was Jewish and only bowed to God.  Haman was incensed and decided to kill all Jews because of Mordecai’s perceived disrespect. Haman convinced the King these people were a threat to his kingdom and the King allowed him to do what he pleased with the people.  An order was sent with the King’s signature to kill ALL Jews.

When Mordecai learned of this, he was devastated and mourned loudly in the streets.  When Queen Esther sent heard about Mordecai’s grief, she sent a trusted aide to find out what was wrong. He sent a copy of the King’s order to Queen Esther and instructions to go beg the King for mercy. She said no, she wasn’t allowed and would be killed if she went to the King without his permission. He replied don’t think because you are in the King’s house that you alone will be saved when the Jews are slaughtered.  If you stay quiet now, Jews will be delivered at a later date, but you and every Jew associated with you will die…Maybe you became Queen for such a time as this.

 FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS. For such a time as this. While God’s name is not specifically mentioned in this Book, God’s hand is all over Esther and Mordecai. Every step of the way, God used Mordecai and all the people they encountered to ensure Esther was in a position to save the Jewish people when necessary.  Esther was a Jewish girl living in Persia with the rest of the Jewish nation. She wins a beauty contest of all things and becomes Queen. As the story goes, she saves her nation from destruction because she realizes God’s call and placement in her life.

Today, like Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, Mary Jackson, and Queen Esther, you are a Woman of Substance.

God has placed a special calling on the lives of women. We are phenomenal beings made in the image of God and created for a specific purpose. A woman of substance recognizes that she must be a participant in life and not just a spectator.  She doesn’t play by the rules, she creates the rules. She doesn’t fit into a box, because she is the box and it stretches as far as she desires and imagines.  She wears a crown and isn’t afraid to shift the crown of other Queens when it is tilted.  

The way that we walk into our substance is to realize and accept that

1.  God has a purpose and a plan for every life. Esther is such an amazing story,  because you wouldn’t see winning a beauty contest as part of God’s plan,  but God’s ways are higher than our ways.

If you feel at times that you have nothing to offer, remember Queen Esther, her moment came because God used something random about our self that God uses to fulfill our purpose.  So, don’t be afraid to be extraordinarily beautiful, weird, smart, outspoken, goofy, funny, or strong.  Today, let me encourage every woman here, that God has placed you in this world and in your city or state or job or family or school for certain purposes that only you can fill when you stand as your most authentic self.

2. Every day God is preparing you for special times and opportunities in your life. In Hidden Figures, Dorothy Vaughn, was the “colored” computers untitled supervisor relegated to a small room, but she saw that the IBM computers were going to replace them all, so she taught herself how to set them up and use them making herself and her team invaluable members of Langley.  And because of this she became the first African American supervisor and was regarded as one of the most brilliant minds at NASA.   

If you feel at times that you are going nowhere, remember Queen Dorothy, her moment took years in the making  I know it was hard, being the smartest one in the room and not respected or regarded because not only are your “colored” but you are also a woman, which meant that she was inferior.  I implore you to take that frustration, anger, and hot tears and keep fighting, keep studying, keep building, & keep believing my sister queen because we all need you to be prepared when God’s special opportunities show up. 

3. You may not save an entire nation, but God will place people in your life that support you as you move into your purpose.  Queen Esther had her cousin and guardian Mordecai.  In Hidden Figures, Queen Mary, Dorothy, and Katherine had the support and belief in each other.  Queen Mary had support from the team leader, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor, to apply for an official NASA engineer position. She also begins to pursue additional engineering coursework, as she already has a mathematics and physical science degree but needs additional certification courses offered only through the all-white nearby Hampton high school. And because of this, she must file a petition to be able to attend the all-white school to the court for permission from the judge. After explaining the significance of "being first", the local judge grants her legal authorization to attend the segregated all-white school. Mary Jackson became NASA and America’s first African-American aeronautical engineer.  And Queen Katherine had her white supervisor of the Space Task Force, Al Harrison impressed by her abilities and white astronaut John Glen, who refused to launch unless she checked the calculations in comparison to the IBM computer.  Katherine Johnson went on to perform calculations for the Apollo II mission and NASA dedicated a building in honor for her groundbreaking work in space travel.

See every day as an opportunity to make a difference in another life.  It is hard – you will be disrespected, dismissed and demeaned, but you won’t be alone. God will send people that will believe in you and fight for you and sometimes check you to ensure your crown sits securely on your head as you fulfill your God-ordained purpose.

My Beautiful sister Queens the world will do everything in its power to knock you down, to make you believe that you CANNOT because you are too black, you are too light, you are too big, you are too small, you are too feminine, you are too strong, you are too loud, you are too passionate and it's all lies!  

You are made in God’s magnificent image and:

You were created to be loud and proud…

You were created to preach...

You were created to teach...

You were created to lead…

You were created to build…

You were created to be vulnerable…

You were created to be smart…

You were created to invent…

You were created to study…

You were created to restructure…

You were created to be YOU, in all your beautiful, authentic and phenomenal self.