April 20 – Know Thyself!

The Abbess is about to share with you one of the most important things her reading ever taught her, one of the most far-reaching insights ever illuminated for her inside the leather-bound book that houses the revelation of the Lord God.

This is how Lectio Divina works, and this is how a monastic queen might become a great woman of God, a vital and magnificent, soft-spoken sovereign.

In reading one day, the Abbess began to wonder how it was that Jesus Christ came to know that He was the Son of God. As an infant in the manger, was His mind fully formed, did He lie upon the straw, swaddled against the chill, and think through the arrival of the shepherds and the wonder of His parents? Did the Father speak to Him one day when He was alone, or did He hear in a dream, “You are my Son; I thought You ought to know!” None of these possibilities seemed plausible. The Voice of God did proclaim Jesus’ Sonship, when He was baptized by John, but clearly He by then already knew Who He was.

Wonder of wonders, Jesus came to know Who He was through the Scripture. As the Word was read to Him, and as He learned to read it, everything that was true of Him registered true in His soul and spirit. Just as we read, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and know that it is quite true . . . of us . . . He read, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14,) and knew these words were true of Him.

When Elizabeth reads about her lineage, she knows exactly who lived and died and what happened that she should now sit upon the throne of her destiny. She knows by what historical and constitutional “right” she has become Queen.

Here is the wonder! . . . when we read the Scripture, we may know with eternal certainty just who WE are, as well! “I have called you by name; you are mine.” (Is. 43:1,) and “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 30:22.”

Elizabeth has an ancestry that links her with many of the crowned heads of Europe. We have a crown laid up for us, a crown of righteousness, if we will love Jesus’ appearing (2 Timothy 4:8,) and we shall wear it, as surely as Elizabeth wears hers. This is our Lectio Divina, and this is our inheritance. Amen.


At Nottingham Council House,
The Young Queen