Stained Glass Splendor Introduction

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Surrounding the outer walls of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Columbia, Missouri is the Story of Life, illustrated in Stained Glass Splendor.

This Story flows in time, like our baptismal waters, cleansing, healing and bringing Life to all who venture to explore it.

In fact, we see depicted at the base of every window, that same flowing Stream of Life.

Our Story is divided into five groups of three windows each.  Each group, or “Triplet” illustrates a different and significant time period in Biblical history.

Beginning with God’s Creation and ending with Jesus’ promise of  Eternal Life, this is a story of Salvation, a story of Covenant, a story of Love.

This is the story of God’s affectionate intervention in reuniting humanity with their Creator, through certain “Chosen” characters in Biblical history.  And that intervention is always carried out without ever stifling God’s most precious gift to us, our freedom of choice, or ‘free will’.

The first of these chosen characters is a man named Abraham, who with his wife Sarah, and by the grace of God, began a lineage that would eventually lead to a “Messiah” or Savior of the human race. But the pilgrimage of these people, the Israelites, was not an easy journey.  The characters of this story had to overcome incredible trials, temptations and failures before ever reaching their destination.

The second highlighted character is Moses, who also, by the grace of God, miraculously delivered this ‘Chosen People’ from a state of terrible oppression into renewed freedom.  Yet, even though they were physically free of slavery, they were still bound by 400 years of spiritual and mental mis-conditioning.  And it took another 40 years to cleanse those thoughts, desires and actions in order to truly begin a new relationship with their Creator.

In the time that passed, a lot of water flowed beneath that temple before hope was ever renewed again.  And that hope came in the form of God incarnate, Himself.

As Jesus, our third story character, teaches humanity what humanity was really created to be, we are again given the choice.

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Do we choose to truly live as we were intended to live, or will we choose to continue to struggle and suffer with an inevitably hopeless future?

And even though suffering may still be a part of these lives anyway, given the correct choice, we’ll find that the Hope of Jesus and the strength of the Holy Spirit will carry us through it all!

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The die was set.  The form was designated.  The Church became that form, to teach, to govern, to guide and to lead.  With Peter, our fourth stained glass window character, as our icebreaker, we now begin OUR journey through life in a whole new way – as a Church community.

Rather than drudging through life in hopeless desperation,
we too have the HOPE of Jesus, the hope of eternity.

We know.  We follow.  We Live!

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So come and dip your toes,
as we meander deeper and deeper
into these waters of LIFE –
in Stained Glass Splendor.

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Here we will find, like Ezekiel,
the GLORY of Eternity
awaiting us,
just a little further
downstream . . .

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1. The Creation Triplet

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