Stained Glass: Our Calling as Christians

Window by David Hetland
Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead, Minnesota 

This past week at Duke Divinity School we heard some great talks by English priest and poet Malcolm Guite. He read for us The Windows by George Herbert (1593-1633). Rev. Guite compared our lives to pieces of stained glass. 17th-century window-makers had more rudimentary technology than is available today. Back then one could make the glass very clear, but then it had to be thin and breakable. If the piece were thicker, then it would have inconsistencies causing things to look wavy. None of the pieces of a beautiful stained glass window are perfect, yet they allow the light in. Each of us is inconsistent and "crazy" and breakable and "brittle" in our own ways, but we are called to shine Christ in and through ourselves. In order to be colored (or annealed), each piece is heated in the fire so that it can be changed to the wishes of the maker.

Lord, anneal me and shape me into a part of your story, that my own unique gifts and skills can enhance the beauty of your light and life.

Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?

    He is a brittle crazy glass;

Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford

    This glorious and transcendent place,

    To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,

    Making thy life to shine within

The holy preachers, then the light and glory

    More reverend grows, and more doth win;

    Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.

Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one

    When they combine and mingle, bring

A strong regard and awe; but speech alone

    Doth vanish like a flaring thing,

    And in the ear, not conscience, ring.