Monday, January 5, 2004
Monday, January 5, 2004
Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God's will entrust themselves to
a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good.
(1 Peter 4.19
NRSV)
Capt. Townsend left Britain after Margaret, bowing to a disapproving establishment, told the nation October 31, 1955, she had decided not to marry Townsend because he was divorced. The romance between Capt. Townsend and the young princess, 16 years his junior, became public in 1953. It was a year after his divorce and the year Elizabeth was crowned monarch and temporal head of the Church of England, which frowns on divorce. Amid a furor which reverberated through Britain and its Commonwealth of former colonies, the much-decorated war ace was banished from the palace on the advice of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill to a diplomatic post in Brussels. But the romance survived until 1955 when Margaret, then age 25 and third in line to the throne, made her final decision.
"She could have married me," Capt. Townsend wrote in his 1978 autobiography, only if she had been prepared to give up everything--her position, her prestige, her privy purse. I simply hadn't the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost."
Choices, choices, choices--so many choices. We may never have to choose between true love and a throne, but we still have choices. Will your choices follow God's will for your life?
Dear Jesus, guide me in making wise choices that will help me fulfill God's will for my life. Amen.
