Cranmer's Band

This nasty-looking ‘band’, displayed at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, is said to have girded the waist of Archbishop Cranmer as he awaited sentence and execution in his prison at Oxford. It was presumably removed before they fed him to the flames and would have been a source of great discomfort and unnecessary security while his accusers and judges carefully plotted his demise. That so great a man should have been so burdened is heart-wrenching. Yet the Lord called him home that day in March, 1556; he left behind his enemies, his sinful nature and his fears, along with his wretched, iron band.

Death is a thief, plundering our families and robbing our joy. Yet for the Christian, it not only offers a meeting with Jesus the Christ, but a grand divestiture of all that is painful, uncomfortable and horrible.

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. Isaiah 25:8

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