A Right Royal

If you hadn’t realised, the Queen and I have a lot in common. We’re both female. We both have endoskeletons. We both look good in hot pink. We were also both in Melbourne at the end of October 2011. Even more coincidentally, we were both in Fed Square at the same time on the same day while in Melbourne. We even both had the opportunity to ride on a tram that day!

But that’s where the similarities end. After all, she’s the Queen of England. I’m not. I had to pay for my tram ticket, while she had a whole Royal Tram to herself (and her husband and some others, but I doubt she ended up nose-to-armpit with anyone in a peak-hour crush, as it was for me). Her likeness appears on currencies in a number of countries around the world, while mine doesn’t. She also looks great in hats, whereas if I wear a hat, it looks like something from outer space has landed on my head and is attempting to devour my hair. In addition to that, I’m not actually royalty—hard as that may be to believe.

Not that I think I really would want to be so here on earth. It seems to be a fraught situation. Just look at the gruesome ways in which some monarchs exited stage-left in history.

Julius Caesar failed to beware the Ides of March and got stabbed 23 times. A popular theory about the murder of Edward II involves a red-hot poker. There were beheadings in the French Revolution and being shot to death in a cellar in the Russian Revolution.

Then there’s Henry VIII, who is (in)famous for his divorced–beheaded–died–divorced–beheaded–survived approach to wives. So the risk wasn’t just in being king, but also in being married to one, or even being more closely related to royalty than someone who desperately wanted to be ruler. Roman emperor Nero was said to have favoured cyanide. But not for himself, obviously.

Mercifully, we live in more civilised times where, if you are royalty, you only have to live with the paparazzi photographing your every move, the press critiquing your every outfit, and the endless stream of exceptionally dull duties you have to perform.

Yet, in spite of this, people still long to be royalty or for the lifestyle it affords, even though very few of us are going to ever attain it. But there is a chance to become part of a Royal Family and it doesn’t involve lucking out and marrying a Danish prince you met on a night out at Circular Quay, Sydney.

It involves embracing the free gift provided to us by Jesus Christ when He died on the cross for the sins of the world. By choosing to do this, we get to become children of the Heavenly King—God.

In the Bible, Galatians 4:4-7 says, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. . . . and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”

If we believe in Jesus, love Him and follow Him, we will be offered a “crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Peter 5:4). If we choose to connect with Him, we become heirs of the King of kings—and, I’m assured, there are no hats involved with that! And no end to it, too.