“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

“. . .When I became a man, I put away childish things.”

(I Corinthians 13:11)

The stained glass windows in the nave of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in England represent the stages of development in the Christian life. When you walk through the sanctuary at Coventry toward the chancel and alter, the windows which are set at saw-tooth angles in the side walls, come into view in pairs as you move up abreast of them, one on your right and one on your left.

The windows on the left side are devoted to the theme of each person’s development in the natural cycle of life. On the right side, the windows depict the perfection which God looks for in every one of us at each stage, and to which we should always aspire.

“The first pair of windows represent childhood, and are in fresh, young green colors. The next pair, representing puberty and the passions of youth, are in bright red colors.”

“Next in progression toward the chancel are the multi-colored windows of middle life, representing that stressful time of trials and triumphs. The fourth pair of windows are of blue and deep purple, representing the wisdom and serenity of old age.”

Finally, just before the chancel and altar are the last windows in bright golden yellow representing the life everlasting.

Now, it is only when you reach the chancel in the Cathedral at Coventry, and turn to look backward through the great church that the whole range of windows on both sides can be seen at once in their glorious riot of colors.

Now, I direct your attention this morning to the windows of Coventry Cathedral because, it seems to me, that Sir Basil Spence, the architect, is saying three very significant things to everyone of us, whether we ever get to Coventry or not, about this life we are now living.

And first, there is this: Each stage of life has its characteristic coloration, which is given, and we can’t change, but which we need to understand and accept for ourselves and for others: the fresh young green of childhood, the bright and sometimes violent reds of adolescence, the multicolored hues of the middle years, the blues and purples of old age.

How helpful it would be for us if we could always see life’s various stages first of all in terms of their characteristic colors! Never to forget: childhood’s tender young greens, propitious of growth and development; youth’s ardent, bright reds. Never to expect: the blue of old age’s wisdom where nature has painted young green, nor to expect the serenity of twilight’s purple in youth’s impetuous crimson temper.

One reason that in all of Christendom motherhood has been so rightly revered is that Christian motherhood at its best has always combined a spirituality and a practicality that is based on a capability of clearly seeing each color in life’s changing spectrum.

I recall hearing Teapot, my dear wife and the mother of our children, saying many a time:  “I get so tired trying to interpret everybody in this family to everybody else; trying to be the buffer between everyone!” Well, it is a tough assignment, but so needed. And usually in our Christian families this role is filled by the mother, or in her absence, by a grandmother, an aunt, or a daughter, or anyone who is providentially provided with that infinite love and understanding to see clearly all the varying ages and generations and sexes and talents of the members of that family, and to interpret each to the other in terms of the characteristic color of each stage.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” said Jesus, “for they shall be called the children of God.” Surely the Master must have been thinking primarily about the one in every family who through love makes home a heaven, even where they are so many conflicting interests, and natures, and points of view, and passions — that every home without such a peacemaker could so easily become a hell. And of course, the principal genius of such a family peacemaker, is the ability to see life predominantly in terms of the characteristic color of each stage.

In the second place, the architect’s concept for the sanctuary windows at Coventry is saying this to us about our life: “Reality includes for us at every stage, not only the natural progression of growth and age depicted by the windows on the left, but also the ideal of God’s perfection for his sons and daughters at every stage, as seen in the windows on the right, for in those windows are depicted the symbols of the Christian virtues appropriately regnant for each stage of life.

Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” advanced the idea that eternal reality exists in heaven and that everything here on earth is an imperfect copy, or shadow, of that heavenly perfection. Man to be fully man must, at each stage of his life, give expression not only to the emotions and powers within him which are most appropriate and natural at that chapter, but man must do this in harmony with and obedience to the divine ideal for man at that particular age. Somehow we must manage to see those windows on our right.

Some years ago, Tom Prideaux, in writing a drama review for Time magazine, observed that for three successive seasons there had been plays on Broadway in New York about three men: Thomas a’ Becket, Thomas More, and Martin Luther. Prideaux wrote: “All these men staked their lives on principles. Their courage and integrity have been sure box-office success.” Then Prideaux wrote on to ask these questions: “Why then, in this sellers’ market are there so few heroes, on the stage or in books, from America or anywhere else? What’s happened to the image of man? Who cut him down and what can be done to restore him? Or does he deserve to be restored?”

Some of us have taken on a bit more hope for our situation to observe that the recent deaths of Jimmy Stewart, the popular movie star, and Charles Kuralt, the gifted author and TV journalist, brought forth spontaneous and tumultuous waves of expressions of adoration and gratitude for two contemporary Americans whose private and public life exhibited some of the noblest qualities of the human spirit.

The writer of the book of Genesis affirms that God made human beings in his own image, and the whole of scripture insists that God has revealed the moral and spiritual principles appropriate for humanity at every stage of our development — that without striving toward this idea, humanity is not fully human.

What’s happened to the image of man? Who cut him down? Have we? Perhaps not intentionally, but when we treat people as the mere product of heredity and environment and circumstance — when we fail through Christian nurture at home and church to put up the windows on the right side of the cathedral of life revealing at every stage the divine ideal of development, then we have become a party to cutting down the image of people as the children of God.

The pairs of matched windows in the rebuilt Coventry remind us that the changing colors in the natural cycle of our human progression through life are at each stage matched by another reality — God’s standard of perfection.

Finally, the architect’s grand concept for the Coventry Cathedral windows is saying this to us about our life: that just as one must go all the way to the church chancel, turn around and look back over all the way we have come before we can see all the windows at once in their riot of colors and chronological sequence of symbolism; so is our earthly life ordered that we must go through each stage in its appointed progression, drinking in its experience, absorbing and reflecting its changing colors, until we reach the end and goal of our pilgrimage. When we shall be able to turn and look back with understanding upon its deepest meanings that now we express in such Christian doctrines as Predestination, Providence, and Election.

This is the difference between the partial and the perfect view St. Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Corinthians: “Now we see reality as if looking into an imperfect mirror. Now we know in part. Then we shall know, even as we are known.”

My beloved friend and mentor, Dr. Charles E. Diehl, from my college days and on, used to say when asked to explain the doctrine of Predestination: “It is like this: when I was young my life seemed a conglomeration of badly mixed events — some I called ‘good’, some ‘bad’. Now that I am an old man, I can look back and see how everything fitted into the total plan God had for my life. Now I can see the reason for many things that perplexed and troubled me. Now I see that God in his love controlled everything all the time.”

An elderly woman recovering from a long and painful hospital experience said: “There have been so many rich and deep spiritual compensations for me in this illness. God has taken care of me beyond my hopes and expectations. I’m getting well. Everyone has been so kind. Quite unexpectedly, a hospitalization insurance policy turns out to contain more benefits than I had every dreamed, so that all my expenses are taken care of. I have found out what Isaiah meant when he wrote of God’s promise to the returning exiles: “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”

But here is a sense in which each one of us, whatever our age now, can come to the chancel altar in the cathedral of our souls and make a commitment of our lives through faith in Jesus Chris, even at an early age, and be whisked to the very heart of eternity and there be given a fleeting glimpse of the meaning of our life here and hereafter — seeing in the broad spectrum of life’s fullest colors, from childhood’s fresh greens, through youth’s reds and old age’s blues and purples, even to eternal life’s imperishable golds.

St. John of the Cross said: “Faith is the marriage of God and the soul.” And Dag Hammarskjold wrote that “the present moment — that off springs of the past, yet pregnant with the future — the present moment always exists in eternity as the point of intersection between ‘time’ and the ‘timelessness of faith’, and therefore, as the moment of freedom from ‘past’ and ‘future’.”

Now, for us, is the moment of freedom for our decision to accept by faith Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Now is the time for us to seal the provision of the divine guidance through all of life’s changing chapters, and to grasp the ultimate victory.