Yesterday when Adam and I returned from our Cowboy Christmas adventure he showed me his make-shift workshop where he designed and shaped the stained glass for my birthday cabinet. He showed me how he cuts the glass and how he measures and smooths and manipulates the glass so that it becomes art. He taught me how to score it and how to crack and break and control it. I watched how careful he was with the glass, how he cared for it and held it.
And I thought to myself…this is why I love the stained glass windows in church. I know that there are churches that meet in warehouses and in school gymnasiums and churches that meet in old skating rinks, but I will always love and miss the glass. I thought for a while that it was just the tradition or just the beauty of the glass, but now I really know.
It is the perfect medium to tell the story of God.
Originally used as a pictorial Bible, stained glass is a powerful medium because of the metaphor it creates. How the artist creating the stained glass design has to know the principles of the glass in order to use it. How fragile and colorful and small the glass is in the artist’s hands. An invidual piece of glass has to be put with other pieces to make sense. It takes time and careful design. The artist entertains the glass’ whims; you have to break it and tap it carefully for it to become art. You have to nudge the glass, you can’t force it. Adam took something incomplete and lonely and made it whole, made it admirable. He used the glass’ weakness to break it and form it to other glass’ weak spots in order to make it strong enough to be art.
People and glass are so much the same, as are artist and Creator. What a fantastic and powerful tool we have in our sanctuaries. It is glass and it is story at the same time, and I like stories.
