When life knocks you down enough times you start to ask, where is God?... It took some time for me to understand that God never leaves me, He is always there preparing me for the next round. Like a trainer in the boxer's corner, he can't take the hits for the fighter, but he has trained him to defend himself from them and strengthen him to get back up after a knockdown.

I was reading an article written by -David McCasland in which he wrote about four black college students in Greensboro North Carolina. On February 1, 1960, these young students sat down at a “whites only” lunch counter, one of them Franklin McCain noticed an older white woman seated nearby looking at them. He was sure that her thoughts were unkind towards them and their protest against segregation. A few minutes later she walked over to them, put her hands on their shoulders, and said, “Boys, I am so proud of you.” McCain recalled the events years later on National Public Radio, he said the events taught him never to stereotype anyone, instead take time to consider others and seek an opportunity to talk with them. My grandmother would always tell me “Never judge a book by its cover” and that is what happened in 1960 at the lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, those four students saw the color of her skin and thought she could only see the same.

In my line of work I deal with stained glass windows at times. Most of us never look at the way they are made or how they line up with our lives. Most churches have stained glass windows and we sit and admire the beauty, never thinking about the process of using broken pieces to create such a work of art. The process of a stained glass window starts with shards of broken glass, which are then shaped to fit like puzzle pieces. The pieces of glass laying there without shape or form may look like just a pile of broken glass, but to the artist, it’s the start of a beautiful work of art, something that will have meaning and be admired by many, and that, is how God sees us, as a thing of beauty waiting to take form for the whole world to see and admire His handy work.