Her uniform is yellow and black. Wax and honey are her products and dusty pollen her medium of exchange. Her incessant buzzing reflects the busy-ness with which she goes about her activities, but don’t be fooled by the commotion. She’s incredibly mild-mannered, in fact, a bit boring by the way she drones on about [...] The post The Flight and Delight of the Bumblebee appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree… Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. ~First and last lines of the poem “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer, 1913 I was going to title this article “The Tree with Biblical Roots,” but the [...] The post A Colorful Tree That Reminds Us of Noah appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

We all know the gospel story of the friends who brought a paralyzed man on a stretcher to Jesus but couldn’t get through the crowd (Luke 5:17-39). The friends’ particular virtue was their resolve to get the paralytic to Jesus—no matter what. Their human resolve is amazing, but the key to this man’s healing [...] The post Dramatic Conversions and the Power of Grace appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

What you’re looking at in the image above is the inside of a Steinway Grand Piano. For a sense of perspective, just look at the size of the screw head at the top right. Wow! It is truly amazing and beautiful, isn’t it? Now take a look at the inside of a violin and [...] The post The Inner Life of Musical Instruments appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

I have never kept my love of Gothic architecture a secret. I have only to walk into a Gothic cathedral to experience a spiritual retreat. I can literally spend hours looking upward. And there is a good reason for that. Gothic architecture is not a bunch of stones placed cleverly together for dramatic effect. [...] The post Medieval Gothic Cathedrals are a True Wonder appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

You might think that an artist who paints sacred art does so out of a profound sense of faith, and in that you would be mostly correct. We have only to look at the many centuries of Christian artists who have expressed their faith in artistic beauty to know that this is true. Fra [...] The post This Incredible Angel Artist Literally Had No Faith appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

“How is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene…” (Acts 2:8-10) The Day of Pentecost was a watershed for the Church in a literal sense. Celebrated from ancient time by the [...] The post An Ancient Holy Place on the Side of a Mountain appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) Of course the Christ Child is the center of Christmas; without Him the holiday would have no meaning at all. Yet there’s another boy, one named Charlie Brown, who has become [...] The post The Music Man Behind the Charlie Brown Christmas appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

On a mission trip years ago, I visited a country that very few Westerners, especially Americans, have ever visited: the Republic of Benin, in French-speaking West Africa. It is just a sliver of a country in a very large continent. The nation’s entire population (about 14 million) is only slightly larger than the city [...] The post Our Lady’s Victory in the Place Where Slavery Began appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more

Christians in the West are heirs to centuries of established Christian teaching and culture. These are immortal blessings, even if we take them for granted at times. So it’s hard for most of us to conceive of the situation of an infant church growing and suffering in a culture and at a time vastly [...] The post The Only Country in History That Evangelized Itself appeared first on Sacred Windows ..read more