Are You Cinderella?
April 1, 2016 • By Ed Wrather
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. – John 1:12 NKJV.
And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. – Revelation 19:16 NKJV. (See also 1 Timothy 6:15)
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” – Revelation 21:9 NKJV.
We remember the fairy tale of Cinderella and the Prince who finds the slipper she left behind. The slipper only fits the foot of Cinderella who becomes a Princess living happily ever after with the Prince. In Taiwan, there is now a beautiful glass slipper church 55 feet tall. It will be used primarily for weddings. The glass slipper church was inspired in part by the Cinderella story, but also by another well-known story in Taiwan. In the 1960s a 24-year-old woman named Wang was to be married, but she contracted the disease known as Blackfoot disease. The United States National Library of Medicine in an abstract says this about the disease: “Blackfoot disease is an endemic peripheral vascular disease found among the inhabitants of a limited area on the southwest coast of Taiwan, where artesian well water with a high concentration of arsenic has been used for more than eighty years.” The sad story of the young woman in Taiwan is that her legs had to be amputated. Her wedding was cancelled, she never married, and she lived the rest of her life in a church. (BBC 01.15.16)
There are many versions of the Cinderella story in many cultures of the downtrodden persecuted heroine being raised up from the lowest of the low to become royalty. The earliest known secular variant of the Cinderella story was written in 7 B.C. about Rhodopis. Rhodopis was a Greek slave girl who was raised up from slavery to marry the king of Egypt. However, it may be that all of these stories are based on the Biblical story of Esther who won the royal beauty contest (Esther 2:1-4) to become the queen of King Ahasuerus aka King Xerxes, ruling Persia from 486 to 464 B.C., one of the most greatest monarchs of the ancient world. This occurred while the Jewish people were in captivity. In this original Cinderella story God has a plan for this young orphan Jewish woman born in captivity and raised by her cousin or uncle Mordecai. Through Esther, all of the Jewish people are saved from the plot by the evil Haman who sought to destroy them.
Esther must risk her life to save her race by entering the presence of the king uninvited to tell him of the evil plot by Haman. Mordecai tells her: “Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this (Esther 4:13-14)?”
If you have received Jesus as your Savior (John 1:12) you have been “born again” into the royal family of the King of kings and Lord of lords. You are the Cinderella princess or the Cinderella prince. Just like God had a great plan for Esther’s life, God has a great plan for your life. Don’t miss out on God’s great plan! For “who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”