When Our Crowns Fall to the Ground
Just when I think I have my spiritual act together, my symbolic crown falls right off my head.
Is it just me? Or do you go through seasons when you majorly stumble in your Christian walk and that crown falls to the ground with a metallic clink?
The stumble hurts. Not only does my crown fall to the ground, but I often skin my knees. Sometimes my stumble causes a ripple effect and impacts other people. It all starts when I take my eyes off Jesus.
The Bible gives us real-life examples of people just like us who did not pay enough attention to their spiritual lives and ended up in some very real messes. Such is the situation in Lamentations.
Personally, the short book of Lamentations is a hard one for me to read. It emotes great sorrow, and well, lamenting. Jeremiah is boo-hooing over the city of Jerusalem because they refused to repent of their sins toward God after he preached to them over 40 years. He watched them go into captivity under a Babylonian king and saw Jerusalem destroyed.
All of this destruction was self-inflicted.
“Jerusalem sinned grievously…” Lamentations 1:8
Jerusalem’s crown, a symbol of her prestige among the nations, had fallen to the ground because of the effects of sin.
“The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us for we have sinned.” Lamentations 5:16
Now I know we don’t wear a literal crown as Christians. But when we have unconfessed sin in our lives, it is like watching our symbolic crown fall from our head in slow motion. We can feel very vulnerable with an unadorned head in front of our God.
So what should we do when our crown metaphorically gets knocked off our noggins? It is totally appropriate to have a season of mourning and grieving over the very issues that knocked that crown to the ground. True repentance will often find us face down offering a sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart as David did in Psalm 51.
However, we don’t need to stay in that season. I am completely in love with the verses God led Jeremiah to put smack dab in the middle of his boo-hoo book.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23
Losing our crown for a season does cause a multitude of sorrow. Just read a few verses in Lamentations and you can detect that very quickly. But take heart…repent and let His mercies wash over you. Then let the King of Kings place your crown squarely back on your sweet head. God always desires restoration.
