Taking a lesson from the Megillah

One can read the Megillah and say it all happened by chance. However, if one calculates the chances of so many things falling into place then he/she would be foolish to conclude that it was a coincidence. Seeing through nature and through coincidences is what the Megillah is all about. In fact the word Megillah comes from the word “megaleh” which means to reveal and the name Ester comes from the word “nistar” which means hidden; hence Megillat Ester literally means revealing that which is hidden! Incidentally this is why the baalei musarim say that everyone should write a megilla of their own life. The reason for this is that if we look at different events of our lives independently then we can not see the hand of Hashem at work, however, once we look at the picture as a whole then we can see that none of it was by chance and that everything that happened in our lives was to lead us in the particular direction that Hashem wants us to be in. Hence it is the Megillah that reveals the hand of Hashem.

With this in mind we can perhaps understand on a deeper level the Halacha which requires us to hear EVERY word of the Megillah; if a person misses even one word he has not fulfilled his obligation. This teaches us the very important lesson that we must not overlook anything that happens in our own lives. Even trivial things which at the time seem to be totally meaningless and coincidental could very well play a major role in how our lives turn out. This is the lesson of the Megillah: to reveal the hand of Hashem in our everyday lives where, if looked at in segments of time, Hashem is very hard to find.