By: Carol McClain @carol_mcclain
The art of stained glass
Stained glass--who doesn't love it?
As a child when bored in church, I studied the vivid colors and the play of light through the brilliant windows. Sunday by Sunday, the glass transformed itself into different incredible pieces of art. I told myself stories about the pictures, moved my head to watch the changes and studied the shifting color.
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| shattered lives yield great beauty |
To make a piece, I'd choose and exquisite piece of glass--one with texture and color and swirls. Always, the sheets were too big. Cut and ground, I lost much of what I savored.
Little pieces left over went into a box, and later be recreated in a sun catcher. Smaller piece become mosaics.
Hundreds of works of art are resurrected from shattered glass.
God makes all things beautiful in his time
Last week a wonderful woman graduated from a half-way house for recovering drug addicts. This is a monumental achievement--if you know anything about addiction, you'd understand how hard it is to achieve and how few make it.
She graduated with honors--only the second woman to do so in the history of the home. She has much to be proud of. Still, one more battle awaits her.
With addiction comes unrelenting guilt. The shame of:
- Time wasted
- Families destroyed
- Health compromised
- Sins committed
We can't undo the past. It's one of the primary principles of AA, NA or CR (Celebrate Recovery). We know God has forgiven, and He has thrown those sins as far as the east is from the west. Still our wrongs dog us.
But God will make all things beautiful in His time.
Out of our shattered lives, our pain and regrets, He will create a work of exquisite art:
- God will cut the pieces and solder them into place.
- He will compliment the "faults" of the glass with other textures.
- Taking the leftover pieces, the Lord will create more gifts and more talents, until every scrap of our lives has been made beautiful.
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