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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning.

It’s a year today since Queen Elizabeth II was laid in state in Westminster Hall and some quarter of a million people began to file past in tribute.

I was privileged to be accepted as a volunteer chaplain to what simply became known as ‘the queue.’ It was a most moving experience. There were people of all ages, backgrounds and faiths. There were young children whose parents bravely kept them entertained; there were current service personnel; there were veterans who said when I asked them, ‘She was our Commander-in-Chief, wasn’t she?’

During three three-hour shifts, less than half the time for which some people queued, I didn’t witness a single moment of impatience or hear a bad-tempered word.
I’d approach someone with a banal comment like, ‘Your legs must be weary,’ and be told in reply: ‘If she can serve for seventy years, I can stand for seventeen hours.’ I’d ask if a group had come far, and they’d respond: ‘She was the grandmother of the nation’

The world’s presidents considered an audience with Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace the greatest of honours. But Paddington Bear was not a whit less welcome to tea. Few monarchs in history have combined royalty, dignity and humility.

It wasn’t only royalists who came to pay tribute. Some people made this quite clear. There are legitimate criticisms of monarchies.

But ‘the queue’ was about something different. It showed how people valued something more enduring that the turbid world of the moment: stability, constancy, dedication, and faithful service.

Whatever our own sphere of life, may we too serve faithfully.

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