My siblings and I just finished reading “A little princess.” That story is a riches, to rags, to riches one. The heroine of the story, Sarah, tries to remain a princess even when she is reduced to poverty and maltreatment. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always liked the idea of true royalty. Money and glamor don’t distinguish the royal from the celebrity, nor does title. A title is meant to tell us something about the person in the position. Prince Charming has been reduced to a joke in our culture, we forget that he used to represent real virtues before people made him out to be too cliché. Of course being charming isn’t necessarily a virtue, just like beauty alone doesn’t mean someone isn’t a beast inside. But it used to be a prince was charming because he was good and a princess was beautiful from the inside out. Bad-boy isn’t really attractive, and neither is mean-chick, maybe some people embrace those ideals because goodness seems too boring and cotton candy. But I fail to see how the ability to rise above your adversaries is boring. As King David put it “My head is lifted up above my enemies.” Rising above petty offense, and above letting yourself be bothered by vain and ignorant people’s cruelty is a strength of character few people attain. But if you don’t rise above such people you will become one of them.

I know, I know, in a society of bringing everyone down to the lowest level to be equal, suggesting rising above someone seems arrogant. I’m sure you’ve heard of this phrase though “He who does not punish evil commands it to be done”–Leonardo da Vinci. I would further add that he who cannot rise above evil will succumb to corruption by it. To not punish evil is to say you agree with it being okay. To let it dictate your behavior is saying it is stronger. Royalty is one example of rising above evil; but when they do not, they become the worst perpetrators of it. Just something to think about.

Remember royalty is not who you were born to so much as it is who you devote yourself to; and what you let become you’re domain (field of expertise), but your domain influences you as much as you influence it. So if anything from drama and whining, to riches and ruling, is your domain, beware. You become a slave of it as much as it of you.

But rising above that is possible, in my experience, only with divine help. “For in the day of trouble he will conceal me…he will lift me up on a rock.” Psalm 27:5