In 1558 when twenty-five year old Princess Elizabeth Tudor was confined to house arrest by her half sister Mary, Elizabeth was sitting one day out doors reading a book when she was approached by a group of riders who were men of importance at court in London. She didn’t know if they would require her to return to the Tower of London as a prisoner, or if they had a more peaceful reason to be visiting. In fact, they dismounted and told Elizabeth that Mary had died, and that she, Elizabeth, was now the Queen of England.

Elizabeth’s response was, “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23) The whole verse reads, The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes; Let us rejoice and be glad. She had moved from being a rejected prisoner whose life was in the balance, to being the Queen of England in the space of a few anxious moments.

Elizabeth saw the events of her life in the context of scripture, and those events made sense only in that context. She lived in the center of political and religious upheaval. As the daughter of Henry VIII she grew up a “reject” in her father’s march through the lives and deaths of six women in his effort to acquire a male heir.

While Henry was on his quest , one of England’s greatest future monarch’s was growing up in his own household and under his own direction, but he could not see the great queen she would be.

In the process the king wrenched his nation out of the only official church it had known, and sent England on a see-saw of religious instability between Catholicism and Protestantism.

The times were ripe for a young princess to abandon her faith altogether when Henry died and first his Protestant son, then his Catholic older daughter reigned. The stakes were high, as each side felt compelled to annihilate its opposition.

It would seem only natural that a young person in such an environment would become cynical and reject scriptural faith altogether, but it was the scripture itself that Elizabeth read (in Greek) and that gave order out of the chaos of warring religious factors, all claiming to be “Christian.”

Knowing that the living God was at work in her life (“This is the Lord’s doing”), and that His word was accessible to her, enabled Elizabeth I to become the cornerstone of England’s “Golden Age.”

Love in Him, Prue