Former Blackout Artist

We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. – Rom. 6:3-4

There’s an old story about an artist who traveled to Europe – sometimes to Rome, sometimes to France – to study the stained glass in some of the world’s greatest cathedrals. He wanted to understand why those windows felt so alive… how the light didn’t just pass through them, but seemed to linger.

He measured the patterns, studied the colors, and sketched the designs to the smallest detail.

Back home, with modern tools and precision, he attempted to recreate what he had seen in Europe. His workmanship was flawless. Technically, the windows were perfect.

Yet… something was missing. The light didn’t glow the same way. The colors felt flatter. The warmth he remembered wasn’t there.

So he made another journey back to Europe to figure out where he might’ve gone wrong. While there, he met with a local glass artisan who happened to be an expert in stained glass. And so he explained to the expert what he had done, how he had perfectly replicated the glass at one of the famous cathedrals. He had even brought a sample of his work with him to show the man.

The expert looked it over and complimented him on his craftsmanship. “This is beautiful work,” he said. “But that ‘warmth’ that you’re talking about – you cannot recreate that. You see, the cathedral windows you were looking at have been standing for centuries. You’re not looking at them when they were new and had yet to be exposed to all of the elements… the dust on the streets; the sunlight day after day after day, the smoke, the wind, the rain. You see, time has also worked on the glass – softening it, deepening it, and giving it the rustic warmth that no workshop in the world could ever manufacture. The beauty wasn’t just merely created. It was formed.”

What the artist learned is what many of us learn slowly: you can imitate the shape of something holy without sharing its story. You can copy the technique without ever living the process in your heart. But the things that make faith luminous – the depth, the warmth, the soft and quiet glow – those things often come from exposure, endurance, and time.

We spend a lot of effort trying to keep life from marking us, don’t we? We go out of our way to avoid difficulty. The people who don’t challenge us tend to be the company we prefer to keep. We hate discomfort, we don’t want any part of it.

And yet God does some of his best work through those marks in life.

Maybe that’s what God is doing in us. Not protecting us from every element, but allowing some exposure – long enough for something deeper to form inside us. Not rushing to replace us with something cleaner or newer, but patiently shaping us into something that can hold the light.

The windows were never designed to be perfect. They were created to let light shine through them.