The Crown & the Cortege

It was a moving sight to watch Her late Majesty’s coffin borne on a gun carriage through the streets of London, draped in the Royal Standard and bearing the Imperial State Crown, her heirs in tow. That glittering headdress she wore for seventy years and at most openings of Parliament, no longer adorns her head. It was a crown she could not keep, and nor, given the choice, do I think she would have wanted to. As her forbear King Charles I remarked before his execution:

I go from a corruptible, to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.

Our Queen was a far worthier custodian of that crown than he, but his point stands. The Imperial State, with its pearls, diamonds, rubies and sapphire, is but temporal and decaying. If she, and I believe she did, trusted Christ for salvation and the forgiveness of sins, she has already received a crown better than anything that the jewellers and goldsmiths of London could craft. As the Apostle Peter said in 1:5:4:

and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.

Our eternal crown, like our eternal bodies, will neither fade, nor age, nor be taken from us, like the crowns and bodies of earth. All the good things we currently possess will one day be lost; only Christ is the treasure that endures the ravages of age and death.

Image by Owls1867 from Pixabay