Thursday, April 19, 2012

April 19 - Leather Bound




Let us continue for another day on the subject of Elizabeth’s tutelage.

She says that she reads rather quickly, and that she must, for she is presented with scores of papers day by day, in the ubiquitous “red boxes” that find her no matter where she is, no matter where she travels. In them are the private missives written by government officials, important correspondence from other world leaders, and personal papers of importance or of a private nature.

Two days each year, Christmas Day and Easter, are the only days she is given a reprieve from those boxes. She has said, when a well-meaning friend encouraged her to let them go for a day on holiday, that she never can. “If I did, I should never catch up!”
Oh that we in Cor Unum should have a hearty sampling of the Gospel, of the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms and Proverbs and Epistles, delivered to us each day in a leather-bound box, official and awaiting our attention and sometimes our response!

Of course, we know we do, delivered in a leather-bound, or cloth-cover Book, and our response is at least as important as hers.

There have been kings and queens of England who slopped over their responsibility toward those boxes, and slopped martinis over the loose papers, unread, but this is not Elizabeth. She is the Queen of her Abbey, and she does what it requires of her.

Here is the difference: her reading cannot return a reply, but our can and does! She might write and response and hear back again: we need only lift our hearts and voices to our Correspondent and hear from Him on the spot, at least with His Voice of Comfort, Compassion, or divine Compulsion. All welcome!

We are told that Elizabeth knows the Book of Common Prayer backward and forward, replete as it is with the Word of God. She knows the Scripture. She is reading something more than those boxes . . . something in addition to those boxes. We know she hasn’t the time . . . she must then, have found it, there in the Cor Unum of her palace home.




Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

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