Church Honors Covid-19 Pandemic with Stained Glass Window: St. Mary and St. Andrew’s Church in Cambridgeshire has unveiled a brand-new stained glass window to commemorate the COVID-19 pandemic.
The £20,000 worth window, which seeks to pass a “message of human caring and God’s love” was paid for out of “generous donations.” It features images of a woman delivering food to an elderly man and medical staff wearing PPE (personal protective equipment).
Rev. Alasdair Coles of St. Mary’s and St. Andrew’s Church hopes “the window itself, will be a source of encouragement and solace to people going through difficult times for many years to come.”
The window said to be the first of its sort, sprang from an earlier idea to commemorate the Church’s 1000th anniversary in 2022. So, when the pandemic struck, there was broad support for a window thanking Christians for their care and compassion during those dark days of lockdown in the community, reports Premier Christian News.
Ben Finn, a skilled stained glass artist was commissioned, and students at the adjacent William Westley School were asked to paint a picture of what they understood by caring. About 80 photographs were received, according to Coles, and all of them were given to Ben.
“His extraordinary creativity and sympathy for our project led to an iterative cascade of discussions, emails, texts, sketches, and visits, to finally arrive at the window which you will now be able to see in the church. It is an extraordinary design, telling many interweaving stories of caring, both specific to Whittlesford and touching universal themes. We believe it is unique and certainly, the first stained glass window to depict the pandemic,” Coles said.
A vote and recommendations for appropriate Biblical verse to display in the window were also solicited by the church in August 2021. In the end, “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you,” was chosen.
Describing the window, Coles Said “It’s a very unusual window and it’s extraordinarily detailed. On the left side it shows anxiety, loneliness, the difficulties of life. But the right hand side is joy and community coming together and the abundance of creation, spring, new life, and over the two panels is, is the rainbow which became very much a symbol that we associated with COVID. At the very top there’s a little dove, and the Holy Spirit over both sides.”
St. Mary’s and St. Andrew’s Church is thought to be the first in the UK to have a stained glass window depicting scenes from the Covid-19 pandemic.