JOHN DEMPSTER: You need to lower the drawbridge to let in the 'inspiration and anchor'

Christians have wholeheartedly echoed the many tributes paid to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II since her death was announced. She was a woman of dignity, grace and wisdom who quietly lived her life with all its challenges, committed to serving the people of the UK and the Commonwealth.

She frequently made clear that faith in Jesus was central to her life. “For me,” she said, “the life of Jesus Christ is an inspiration and an anchor.” Just a few months ago she observed: “Throughout my life the message and teachings of Christ have been my guide and in them I find hope.” She was a role model and inspiration to Christians and the whole population. We thank God for her.

Though we may feel at times abandoned by “the system”, there are people of love in our communities, on our streets, on the web or at the other end of a phone, people we will encounter if we persistently reach out for help.

Strangely, for much of my life, I shrank from anything to do with the Royal Family, due to my sense of isolation and sadness. For example, I avoided watching the Queen’s Christmas message because it seemed that the whole nation was watching, and this emphasised my sense of exclusion.

So I empathise with those who have felt in recent days that while everyone else has been mourning they have remained numb and unmoved.

And I empathise with those who feel as they struggle with poverty, ill-health, mental illness that the nation, supposedly so united at times like this, is in fact disunited and unjust.

It is absolutely right to give thanks for the late Queen’s personal compassion. But good to remember, as she herself acknowledged, that there are millions of lights in the darkness – people, whatever their beliefs, who have come to see the absolute primacy of serving one another in love.

Though we may feel at times abandoned by “the system”, there are people of love in our communities, on our streets, on the web or at the other end of a phone, people we will encounter if we persistently reach out for help.

Not until this year, at the time of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee did I realise my foolishness in shutting myself off from the joy of widespread celebration because of my residual hang-ups. I resolved to lower the drawbridge.

We now pray for King Charles III that he may have “long to reign over us”, and we trust that that reign will, as was his mother’s, be Christ-shaped, marked by love and service,

Some of us have barricaded our hearts against the Christ who shaped Elizabeth II’s life. Yet he is a gentle king, his reign expressed in love and service, one who comes to forgive and bless us, to make us whole.

As we let the drawbridge down, we may find as the Queen did that Jesus Christ becomes both “an inspiration and an anchor”.

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