Queen Elizabeth II made history today as she became the first Queen in history to reach her Sapphire Jubilee.
It is typical of our Queen that she marks this incredible 65-year milestone, not by celebrating her many achievements, but quietly at home in Sandringham, Norfolk, reflecting on the day her father, King George VI, died on February 6, 1952.
In fact, the Sapphire Jubilee celebrations are remarkably low key – and most are intimately linked to her devout religious faith.
Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph in the Church in Wales, a well-known coin collector and artist, designed a beautiful but also modest Royal Mint Jubilee coin.
Cameron told Christian Today: "I can understand that that for The Queen it is a day of mixed emotion: bereavement and responsibility, potential and celebration. I wanted to design a coin which celebrated the Queen's service, with the olive branch of fruitfulness, and the oak branch of loyalty. It is this record of sixty five years of unremitting service which is so staggering - and sustained by Christian faith of course."
I was honoured myself to attend, last night, the Anglican-Catholic parish of St Mary's in Rotherhithe, east London.
St Mary's was among those that discreetly marked this Jubilee with an accession service of thanksgiving and prayer.
This church was perhaps a little unusual however in using a liturgy from the 1789 edition of the Book of Common Prayer, a service actually drawn up to mark the accession of King George III. The London Gallery Quire, which performs West Gallery music from the era of Thomas Hardy, sang all five verses of the National Anthem to Thomas Clark's 'Northcourt' setting. This is preferred by many - including me - to the anonymous dirge in popular use today.
The Queen herself attended church yesterday in St Peter and St Paul in West Newton, Norfolk.
A book published by the Bible Society to mark her 90th birthday last year is testament to her strong Christian faith.
So how can we, her subjects and her admirers, best honour our Queen on her Jubilee in this newly-troubled world?
I well remember her Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977, two years before the 1979 elections. Being among those who had just turned 18, I used my first ever chance at the ballot box to vote Conservative and help usher in the era of Margaret Thatcher.
Those years in the late 1970s had been years of terrible privations. So many people suffered so much. I voted for Maggie, along with so many others in rural Britain, because never again did I want to be so hungry and cold. Never again did I want to be forced to revise for exams or do close book work by candlelight. Never again did I want to have to walk eight miles a day there and back again, to school – or later work.
Although I have of course recently done exactly that in London, many times, thanks to the tube strikes.
We in rural Britain in the 1970s were perhaps the UK "rust belt" of our time.
But in 1977, when we danced in the streets and church halls and bought commemorative mugs and coins that I have to this day, of course we had no concept of the massive changes in British society that were only just around the corner. It is astonishing to reflect that only two years earlier, in 1975, Britain had voted in a referendum to "stay" in what was then the European Economic Community.
Like many young people I knew at that time, contemplating the European wine lakes and butter mountains from the remote Staffordshire countryside – acres of farmland, towns and villages that had changed little since the 1950s – I was not entitled to vote in the 1975 Referendum.
I was rendered anxious and furious by the outcome.
In Luke 19, we read of how Zacchaeus was trying to see Jesus. The King James Bible renders this as: "And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature." Christian journalists sometimes like to joke that this is the only mention of the "Press" in the Bible.
Zacchaeus was a tax collector, as reviled then by the educated elite as Donald Trump is today. Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to escape the "press" of people around him. When Jesus saw him up there, he invited him down and then went off to dine with him.
Many were shocked. Yet in the end it became one of the most powerful stories of Christian witness in the Bible.
This story, alongside the Beatitudes, shows to many of us – the despised and marginalised, the estate agents and journalists such as myself, all those who feel sometimes we are the modern equivalents of tax collectors of Jesus' time – that we are not beyond redemption.
In that sense, George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, is quite right in what he said to James Macintyre, Christian Today reporter, when he criticised the "staggering" hostility to Trump.
As a State Visit approaches, we must make sure that Donald Trump is not denied access to our Queen in any way by the loud "press" of the noise against him, and that the tone of that access is not compromised in any way.
The Queen is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. But far, far more than this, in her own daily life she bears witness to the life of Jesus Christ in a manner that is truly humbling and exemplary. In spite of a life of apparent ease and privilege, she carries immense burdens in her willingly-borne duties.
We should reflect on her example. She does not need protecting in some strange way from Donald Trump. He needs to meet her, and she needs to be supported in this meeting. As this Sapphire Jubilee Year kicks off, so different in every way to the Silver Jubilee of 1977, perhaps it's time to sing the less familar words of the National Anthem, and sing them to a different tune:
"O'er her thine arm extend, for Britain's sake defend, Our mother, Queen and friend, God save the Queen."
