Morning Light Through the Wales Window

On September 15, 1963, a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klan members exploded beneath the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls preparing for Youth Day services — Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson, all fourteen, and eleven-year-old Carol Denise McNair. The blast tore through the east side of the church, destroying a stained glass window and scattering debris across the basement where the girls had gathered.

Thousands of miles away, the people of Wales grieved for a community they had never met. Welsh artist John Petts designed a stained glass window depicting a Black Christ with arms outstretched — one hand pushing away injustice, the other offering forgiveness. Funded by donations from Welsh citizens, many of them pennies collected by schoolchildren, the window was installed in the rebuilt church in 1965.

Every morning since, sunlight has poured through that glass into a sanctuary once filled with rubble and sorrow.

Lamentations 3:22-23 declares, "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness."