There is Only One King
“You cannot flinch. Because if you show a single crack, people will see that it is not a crack, but a chasm. And we will all fall in. So you must hold it all together.”
“Must I do that alone?”
“There is only one queen.”
Those words are shared between Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth in the final episode of The Crown, season 3. Worried that she has not sufficiently fulfilled her role as queen during the first 25 years of her reign, Queen Elizabeth asks her sister, Margaret, about whether or not she should go through with the large celebration planned for her 25 year jubilee, frightened that it may open her up to public ridicule or scorn. The answer she receives is the one above. It made for fantastic, dramatic television.
Here’s why: Each of us has heard the echo of these words in the recesses of our own mind. We have felt their crushing weight. Been unable to escape their harshness. Our minds have whispered them and our hearts have believed them.
“You cannot flinch.”
“You cannot show a crack.”
“You fall apart, everything will fall apart around you.”
“You have to do it all alone.”
Lies. All of it. Lies born out of our pride’s almost unstoppable ability to convince us that we are or must be greater, stronger, better, more important than is true in reality.
Now, let us be sure to be straight on this at the start: Each of us is important, significant, born with intrinsic worth, value, and dignity. You are you. And the you that you are is different than any other that currently exists or has ever existed on this planet. You have unique roles, talents, passions, responsibilities, and spheres of influence. You were intentionally made that way, with the greatest of care and intentionality.
The nature of pride is not that it makes us believe these things to be true about ourselves. The nature of pride is that it deceives us into inflating these truths to a place where we believe them to be more true about ourselves than they are about others.
“Everyone is important, but I am most important.”
“If something went wrong with them, everything would be fine. But if something ever went wrong with me, everything would fall apart.”
It does not stop there. The deep insidiousness of pride is that it causes us to believe that those truths about us make us “queen” or “king.” We are the unequivocal masters of the little universes that we have created, the god of our surroundings and circumstances. Pride convinces us that we cannot flinch, cannot crack, cannot fall apart, and must bear that responsibility on our own because if we bend, break, or even hesitate for a moment, all of the world — or at least the world around us — is bound to come crashing down in spectacular fashion.
“Pride makes it hard to see clearly. Impossible, actually.”
Here is reality:
There is only one King. But that is not you or any other human running around on this planet. That singular King is God.
He rules alone because only He can. That is a good thing. If He let you, me, or anyone else rule alongside Him, we would make a right, royal mess of things.
Were He to stop ruling or yield His power to anyone or anything else, everything would fall into the chasm. In fact, the Bible says that if He were to remove His sustaining and upholding hand, there would be nothing left to fall and no chasm available to swallow it, because all would cease to exist.
He has no cracks to show.
He has not, will not, cannot flinch.
That is good news.
The best part of it?
You can flinch. When the pressure mounts and the stakes are high, you need not be unflappable. Instead, you can look to the One who is.
You can crack. Cry. Show emotion. Look for help. Ask for it, in fact. Better yet, turn to the One who has help to give in abundance. Like the author of Psalm 121, you can proclaim:
“I lift my eyes up to the mountains — where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
The world will go on. All does not, nor will it ever, ride on your shoulders. They are too small. The world is too big. Both of those truths should help us to rest easier.
You are not alone. Draw near to Him and He is most certainly near to you (James 4:8).
There is only one King.
And it is not you.
