Bev Psalm 46: Designing a Stained-Glass Window

Light shines through the windows, I stare.

Asked to design a grand spectacle to celebrate a

   battle from 50 years before.

I live on the island of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands,

   where a decisive battle was fought in 1944.

The committee meets and the Island Memorial Chapel is to

   be the place, it’s southern facing wall will let light stream in.

A gesture expressing where the building’s suds are found and

   a vision springs forth in my mind!

18 feet tall with a 5 foot wide circle a third of the way from top.

I see the flags of two nations on either side.

Tropical flowers abound and a soldier is kneeling at the grave of

   a fallen comrade, whose dog tags he holds.

He is looking up, not down, towards the setting sun of an

   enemy’s influence, in hope, not despair.

War symbols, images of ship and fighter plane are present

   but small; in positions appropriate for 50 years later,

   to commemorate all who died and fought for freedom.

On the very coral beach where I stood, a speck of an atoll in the

  Pacific Ocean, just above the equator, West of the International

   Dateline in tomorrow. How fitting!

I’m still remembering 32 years later that the role I played as an

   artist designer, was planned from my first love of colored glass

   in a Sunday school classroom as a child; then helping John Heiss a stained-glass

   window crafssman in Claremont struggling in a start-up business, where I learned what

   shapes could or couldn't be cut from glass sheets,  to when God placed me

   in the right place at the right time, with the right skills to do His will.