Windows Made by Many Hands

When you step inside Chartres Cathedral in France and look up at its stained glass windows — among the finest in the world — you might assume they were commissioned by kings or bishops. But look closer. In the lower panels of many windows, you will find something unexpected: images of bakers kneading bread, furriers stretching hides, and weavers working their looms.

These windows were gifts from the ordinary trade guilds of the town. The butchers funded one window. The water carriers funded another. The carpenters, the shoemakers, the money changers — each guild pooled their modest resources to contribute a single piece of the whole. No one guild could have filled that cathedral with light. But together, blacksmiths and bakers created something that has taken visitors' breath away for eight hundred years.

This is what the apostle Paul described when he wrote that we are "one body with many members." The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you." The baker's window cannot say to the weaver's, "I am sufficient alone." Each panel catches the light differently. Each trade brought something the others could not.

Your church works the same way. The quiet prayer warrior and the energetic greeter, the behind-the-scenes servant and the upfront teacher — each one is a panel in the window. And when the light of Christ shines through all of you together, the world sees something no one of you could produce alone.