Coloured Glass, Darkly

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Fri, 17/01/2020 - 00:06

I’m not a fan of stained-glass windows in churches. Simple colouring, I rather like, but depictions of Biblical characters, or worse- bishops and rich men whose grieving families had the means to immortalise them- confirm my preference for the plain. Still, coloured glass is a beautiful creation, a tribute to the gorgeous minerals manufactured by the Creator, such as emerald and amethyst. Coloured glass is regular glass with metals and oxides added whilst in its molten state. To make blue, one adds cobalt; for purple, manganese. Red glass requires the ingredient of gold, while added silver produces a pleasant yellow.

When I think of heaven, I imagine it as being rather white. A brilliant white, of course, but still white. The robes, the holiness, the dazzling presence of God. And yet scripture suggests there is a great riot of colour in heaven, not least concerning the person of God Himself. Says Ezekiel of his vision of the throne:

Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. (1:28). 

John, in Revelation 4:3, reports:

And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald.

Likewise in 10:1, John offers the following description: 

I saw still another mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.

Heaven will be no monochromatic white set or sterile laboratory, but a glorious explosion of colours and hues. As we are conformed to Christ’s image, I wonder that we too will share in this saturation of awesome colour. As the Spirit breaks us and reshapes us, melts us and reforms us, so He adds His own special ingredients. The suffering and pain we in this life endure are but the metals and oxides that become the vigorous tints and amazing pigments with which our immortal bodies will throb and glow.

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

1 John 3:2