Wednesday 1st June 2022
What the Queen means to me
As the Queen marks her Platinum Jubilee, Alexandra Davis, our Director of Marketing & Communications, shares her thoughts on why the Queen is an inspirational role model
When I was growing up in the late 80s, there were a plethora of Royal Wedding annuals and mugs and tea towels floating around our house. For the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 I joined the throngs outside Buckingham Palace as Brian May from the legendary rock group Queen played the National Anthem on the roof. In 2012, there were street parties galore for the Diamond Jubilee and now we’ve reached that never-before-seen marker – the Platinum Jubilee of a British monarch.
Of course, we’re all very aware of the ups and downs of the Queen’s long life and reign. Sadly, most of our wedding paraphernalia lasted longer than the marriages of three of her children, and recent years have been marked with difficulties and sorrows – the death of her “liege man of life and limb”, her husband the Duke of Edinburgh, the court cases involving Prince Andrew, and the challenges of royal life that led to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex removing themselves from the royal institutions.
Whatever our perspectives on these things, all of us will know that any life is full of joys and full of sorrow and many of us will be grateful that an accident of birth didn’t mean we had to experience these things in front of a global audience.
However, I think it’s the reality of these things that make her personal interventions so powerful; she may live in great splendour and wealth, but she knows the human heart just like the rest of us. Largely we get to see her true self on Christmas Day as we settle in front of the television, stuffed to the brim and desperate for a nap, to hear the only speech she gives each year which is entirely of her own creation.
And in recent years, the Queen’s Christmas Day speech has become an increasingly significant outlet for expressing her Christian faith. As the Guardian noted in 2017, ‘As Britain has become more secular, the Queen’s messages have followed the opposite trajectory.’ The moment that I particularly recall hearing her speak of her faith in a way that resonated deeply with me was in 2014 when she said, “For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A role model of reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance, and healing.”
Christmas is one of my favourite times of year and that has a lot to do with the fact that, other than justifying more chocolate than is really appropriate, we speak so much of Jesus our Saviour. I especially love to speak of Jesus as the Prince of Peace. In a world of violence, to know Jesus as the Prince of Peace is a glorious gift. As again this year we have seen terrible violence tear through Ukraine, while other wars keep raging across the globe, to remember that Jesus has been sent to us as the Prince of Peace is a salve to the spirit.
But perhaps the thing that I love the most about the Queen is the way she’s managed to be steadfast yet willing to change. The observation that her Christmas speeches became more recognisably Christian around the turn of the century have been attributed to various things and we’ll never know what those were. But the fact of the matter is that, in her mid-70s, she embraced a new way of speaking about something that was important to her. She didn’t decide that because she hadn’t much spoken about her faith for the previous 50 years she wouldn’t start now – she actively chose to place her faith at the core of who she is and open herself up to us by showing us her true heart.
As I get older, I hope I will be able to embrace this kind of change as she has. I know nothing about how that change came about, but I do know that in making that change she has edified my faith, encouraged me to look again to the Prince of Peace, and helped those of other faiths and none to reflect on the gift of Jesus as God’s saving plan for our world. This is a powerful model to us, encouraging us to be more like Jesus as we get older, to speak confidently and clearly of Him, and to embrace His constant call on us to change – from glory to glory!
That said, a little p.s.: I do hope that, contrary to news reports, she becomes more willing to embrace a wheelchair before too long – as many of those who live with us at Pilgrims’ Friend Society will tell you, mobility problems don’t mean an end to your usefulness and vitality!
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