Mark Greene is the author of The Queen’s Way and co-author of The Servant Queen and the King she serves. He is Mission Champion at LICC.
The first time I ever thought seriously about the Queen was when God told me to.
It was 2015. And Elizabeth was 89. I had asked God a specific question: please show me someone in the public eye who is an outstanding whole-life disciple of Jesus, someone whose faith shapes all they do and say. ‘Elizabeth’ was God’s answer. Swift, clear, weighty. And to be shared.
Since that day it’s become ever clearer to me that Elizabeth was a gift from God to nation, Commonwealth, and indeed the global community, a beacon of humility, grace, astuteness, good humour, generosity, and deep faith – God’s woman, God’s follower, God’s Queen.
Like many I suppose, I’d never been a ‘royal-watcher’. I admired the Queen, appreciated the clarity and warmth with which she spoke, almost every Christmas, of her trust in Christ and the difference he made to her life, but I hadn’t thought deeply about her particular vision or how God might be working in and through her. Yes, she was a remarkable woman, and a remarkable monarch, but what I came to see, and had confirmed by others who knew her better, was that she was first and foremost a remarkable disciple of Christ. As such, she offered us an extraordinary example of consistent godliness in one of the longest and most public global ministries in the history of the world.