Stained Glass Windows

Recently I was visting another church building for a service. The building had a different style then ours and I enjoyed looking around and noticing the differences in the building itself. It had solid wooden pews. Our building sports wooden pews as well but with cushioned seats. There was a theatre style floor while ours is flat. There was a large space in the front where a very large choir could gather and a piano, but at our church we have room carved out for a full set of drums instead. There was a balcony, which we don't have. And their super high ceiling came more to a point at the top while ours is flatter and not quite as high. It was a beautiful room really. What really captured my attention though, were the colourful and intricately designed stained glassed windows.

It was just one of those moments. I was sitting in this beautiful room looking up at these windows when it struck me how very ironic it is to have stained glass windows in a church.

Stained glass windows have a rather clear purpose. They are made simply to be beautiful. (And sometimes they tell a story.) And even though you can admire their beauty from outside you can't fully appreciate the beauty from the outside. They're designed to have light shine through them. And you have to sit inside the building to be able to admire their sparkle and shine as sun light comes pouring in reflecting the colours of the rainbow. You can see little pools of colour splashed on the floors and the walls of the room. As the sun moves though the sky so does the direction of the beautiful colours. It's the light of the sun that gives them a deeper kind of beauty. But we can only really see it from the inside. So I suppose, the purpose of the stained glass window is having something beautiful to look at only for those who are...on the inside.

But what about the beauty of what God has done through Jesus Christ? The Bible says, "God shows and clearly proves His [own] love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for us." In Him all of creation has been redeemed. All of creation! Which includes every person. Everywhere. No matter what they believe, where they live or how they've been hurt. No matter how angry they are at God, what their religious beliefs, if they choose to deny His existence, or change their idea of who He is to suit their own taste. They may not be for Jesus, but Jesus is for them. And that is a beautiful truth!

So even though I can appreciate the beauty of a stained glass window, and I recognize the hours of time, the planning and the care that went into making them -  I don't want to be a stained glass window. If I were a stained glass window, I would simply be living life, letting His light shine into my life so I can enjoy the "colours of the rainbow" all to myself. I would hide behind walls I've built for myself, walls built by the world I live in and and I would never share this beauty with others.

My prayer for me - and for the church - is that we determine not to be stained glass windows hogging the beauty of the sun all for ourselves, but that we would choose to embark a journey. A journey that involves getting out from behind the walls we've been containing ourselves in (and unfortunately sometimes our God) and begin to discover how we can share this infinite, eternal, all-embracing beauty everywhere we go. And that we would in fact be willing to "go"!