State of Splendour

Watching the first state funeral of my lifetime, I was all agog as I beheld the scarlet tunics, the gold braid, the colourful plumes and the shining silver and gold helmets. If Britain knows how to organise a complex funeral with liberal doses of pageantry and pomp, the rest of the world now knows it too. We could never have put on such a show as this for a vote-grubbing politician, no matter how respected a statesman or woman. Only a monarch of fifteen nations could have warranted so grand a send-off. Yet I was mindful of the Lord Jesus' admonition that the natural world is even more splendid than kingly spectacle:

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Luke 12:27, NKJV

If the natural beauty of creation out-paces British pageant, how much more the splendour of the supernatural?

Your eyes will see the King in His beauty;

They will see the land that is very far off.

Isaiah 33:17

First image by Christian Bueltemann from Pixabay