I was brought up to understand that there are three questions one never asks: How old? How much? What kind of operation?
Last July 29 I got up at 4:45 A.M. along with some seven or eight hundred million other people to watch the royal wedding. It was an unforgettable six hours of pomp and circumstance. The pagaentry, the responsive crowds, the young bride’s loveliness, the groom’s character and relaxed demeanor were all threaded together with sometimes bumbling explanations by American commentators aided or corrected by their British counterparts.
To me, the grandest moment came when, at the request of Prince Charles, that great congregation and choir sang “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation.” It would have been worth whatever the wedding cost just to have 800 million people hear that great hymn!
What followed was a variety of interviews that filled the time while the bride and groom, with their families and friends, had a meal in Buckingham Palace before leaving for Broadlands and the beginning of their honeymoon.
“Is it true,” Barbara Walters asked Mrs. Reagan, “that the Steuben glass urn cost $75,000?”
“And have you chipped in to pay for the gate?” a young girl was asked in the tiny village of Tetbury, where the country residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales stands. The surrounding villages had gone together to have a new wrought iron gate made to replace the old one, which was broken down.
“Yes I ’ave,” the girl replied with a smile.
“Not yet. But will do,” the next responded.
“No,” growled one man. “They’ve got more money than I’ve got. Why should I?”
George Macdonald wrote, “But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from lack of it.”
We have put a price tag on everything but the human soul and its relationship to God who made it. And a wise man once said, “He who has God and has everything, has no more than he who has God and has nothing.”
