The Love of Esther Summerson // Haylee Lynd

     I wanna be like Esther. I'm to the point now where I don't care what anyone says. She might think and talk about herself a lot but she loves other people so so greatly and so so well. She thinks just as much of others as she thinks of herself. She says, "...in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself, and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying; with no other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind..." (XXXV 12-15). This girl is dying or so it seems, and all she can think about are the one she loves and is supposed to be caring for. She wants to fulfill her duty of cleaning the house. She wants to care for Ada, for Richard, for John. She has such a great effect on people and she is genuinely so loved and I find myself jealous of that. I want to work so hard and love so well that people love me and care for me the way they care for Esther Summerson. John Jarnydce says to Esther, "...Ada and I [have] been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early..." (XXXV 16-17). He goes on to describe Richard writing letters because he is anxious about Esther and he describes Miss Flite walking all the way to Bleak House to hear about or see Esther. Esther has made such an impact on so many people, essentially everyone she has crossed paths with. She makes people wanna be better, such as Caddy. She comforts people who truly need it, like Jenny. She loves so so fiercely. 

    I wanna be like Esther. I wanna impact people like Esther. I wanna love people like Esther loves. I mean, we're commanded to do so in the Bible, and I want to make a kingdom impact as big as the impact Esther makes on people. The flesh in me wants to do so so that people love me the way they love Esther. The Spirit in me wants to do so so that people see Jesus in me and desire to seek and to know Him. I feel like Esther kind of embodies both of these desires.


P.S. I commented on Emily's and Justin's posts.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A House Divided//Emily Otts

The words Jesus spoke in Matthew 12 remind me so much of this play: "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Matthew 12:25) King Lear, at the end of the day, is about a family being divided multiple ways. These divisions arise over greed and hatred for one another and cause the whole family to be ruined because of it. King Lear first divides the kingdom after his daughter Cordelia does not proclaim her love to him, so he banishes her. Later, his daughters go against him for not doing as they asked, believing he is unfit and unworthy to be king, secretly plotting against him. But all of this comes to a head in Act 5. After capturing King Lear and Cordelia, Edmund plans to have them killed. You would believe the sisters would be able to work together because their plan is working, but an even greater division has risen between them. Both of them wish to have Edmund for themselves, and they plot against each o...
Read more

The Plague in Everyone// Emily Otts

     In part 4 of the Plague , Tarrou tells Rieux about how he has had the plague forever. Except, this is not the same plague as the one ravaging the town. Tarrou speaks of how his father was a lawyer who believed in the death penalty, how he saw so many people support it and be comfortable about it, and how he had to witness the executions of prisoners. He explains how this sort of mindset is a plague itself, one Tarrou had been fighting for a long time. " That's why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness, a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death" (Camus, part 4, chapter 6). Tarrou wants to desperately not submit to such awful ways of thinking.      Tarrou does not realize it, but the plague he is talking about is sin. Everyone has it, some people give in to it and let...
Read more

The Thirst for Knowledge

     With Book Seven of Milton's Paradise Lost, Raphael is continuing his exposition on Satan's apostasy. The plan is to expose Adam and Eve to the wretched fate of those who cross God's will. The more he shed's light on the subject, however, the more Adam is inclined to ask for more information. He wants to know everything about the subject, as well as God and His creation.      However, while the taste of such knowledge leaves Adam yearning for more, there are boundaries. It is like a toddler eating a cookie... and eventually begging her mother for the rest of the jar. Is it a coincidence that the one thing Adam and Eve are not to touch is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Most readers know how the story ends: these toddlers are never going to be content with a few cookies. They're going in for the jar.   There is a statement in the Bible that is constantly being repeated throughout the Old Testament: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of ...
Read more