Crowned

He crowns you with love and compassion.

Psalm 103:4

Last month, I had the huge privilege of speaking at Hereford Cathedral, where Simon Beer’s depiction of the Crown of Thorns hangs suspended, raising your eyes to the soaring roof.

Isaiah 61 promises a day of God’s favour when we will be given a crown of beauty for ashes. Jesus read out Isaiah’s words and shocked everyone by saying, “This is that day!” He didn’t mean a calendar day, he meant a new era had started - the day of the gift of the crown.

Today is the day of the gift of a crown of beauty for ashes - a gift for you.

I can’t imagine ashes without remembering cremation services of people I dearly love. In the Bible, ashes symbolise grief and mourning over death and sorrow for sin. In place of our grey and bitter ashes, God offers a crown of beauty and eternal life.

Earthly crowns fade. The Bishop sat on King Stephen’s chair which dates back to 1138! Extraordinary! But King Stephen is long gone. Monarchs like governments come and go. Except for King Jesus whose throne lasts forever. He alone can give an everlasting crown.

Such a crown is priceless. Our British royal crown is worth upwards of £5 billion but this crown is worth the life of God. To give you this crown, Christ wore a crown of thorns.

This week, could you dare receive that gift, trusting that God crowns you with love, the love that chose you and adopted you as a child of God, part of the royal family, born to wear a crown?

Could you dare come to the King of love who doesn’t grasp onto majesty but rather gives crowns away? Trust him to crown you with compassion, such compassion for you in your failures and frailties that he lifts you out of the pit, such compassion that it will overflow to others?

Will you go into your week crowned? And remember, no more looking to the ground in shame - you have to hold your head up to wear a crown!

This is that day.