Why "My Stained Glass Window Life" ?

     Why "My Stained Glass Window Life"?
     I have always loved stained glass windows.  Whenever I looked at a them, I figured that the pieces of glass where just broken cast off pieces of that that were collected and made to fit a picture.  Recently, I was reading about how it is made.
     It is an art form.  The glass is crafted to fit where it is designed to fit.
     God is an artist.  Sometimes I feel like what I always imagines the glass was, broken and cast off pieces.  But what if my jagged and rough edges are not an accident or mistake?  What if they were designed that way?  Maybe I was made the way I am so that God's grace may shine through me, creating a beautiful picture only visible when His light shines through me.
     John 9:1-25 tells the story of a man born blind:

Jesus heals a man born blind
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’
‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.  As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’
After saying this, he spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes.  ‘Go,’ he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam’ (this word means ‘Sent’). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ‘Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg?’  Some claimed that he was.
Others said, ‘No, he only looks like him.’
But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.’
‘How then were your eyes opened?’ they asked.
He replied, ‘The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.’
‘Where is this man?’ they asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
The Pharisees investigate the healing
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind.  Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath.  Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. ‘He put mud on my eyes,’ the man replied, ‘and I washed, and now I see.’
Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.’
But others asked, ‘How can a sinner perform such signs?’ So they were divided.
Then they turned again to the blind man, ‘What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’
The man replied, ‘He is a prophet.’
They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. ‘Is this your son?’ they asked. ‘Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?’
‘We know he is our son,’ the parents answered, ‘and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.’  His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.  That was why his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. ‘Give glory to God by telling the truth,’ they said. ‘We know this man is a sinner.’
He replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!’

     The man's blindness was not about sin.  Whether a sin is our's, another's or simply the result of living in a fallen world, it is an opportunity for God's grace to shine and for Him to be glorified.  When we sin, repent. We must trust God and allow Him to use our failures and struggles to fashion a beautiful stained glass window from them.