Stained Glass Miracles

These two stories are very similar, so I thought I would share both of them together. When I hear stories like these, it reminds me that miracles still abound today – ESPECIALLY when it comes to the Lord’s temples and the Kingdom of God on the Earth. I believe both stories come from Chad Hawkins’s book “Holy Places: True Stories of Faith and Miracles From Latter-day Temples.”

The first story is about the Draper Utah temple. Apparently, all of the art-glass windows created by Utah artist Tom Holdman for the Draper Utah Temple miraculously survived a fire that left only a portion of one window damaged, even though the art studio itself was so badly burned, it was condemned.⠀

“Tom Holdman was enjoying a quiet Father’s Day with his family this June when he got the call from the alarm company. The warehouse where he had stored the stained-glass windows for the Draper LDS Temple was on fire. Moments later, he reached the scene just as firefighters arrived and watched in horror as his work of the previous 18 months was nearly destroyed.⠀

Holdman asked the firefighters if he could rescue his precious artwork before the roof collapsed. They agreed, and together plunged into the flames to drag the windows to safety. Bottles of alcohol, acetone and chemicals sat nearby, but none ignited.⠀

Only one window was damaged… It was a miracle.”⠀

Only one window was damaged. 🥰 Not even ruined! just slightly damaged.⠀

To put it into perspective… There are 221 exterior windows, 50 interior windows, and 432 door panels for a total of 35,420 hand-cut pieces of glass. ⠀

And only one window was damaged.⠀

The next story is also about window, but this one hangs in the celestial room of the Las Vegas Temple. It was in a glass factory in Santa Cruz, California in October 1989 when a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay area and caused nearly $3 billion in damage. The quake’s epicenter was near Santa Cruz County. ⠀⠀

In his book, Chad Hawkins explains that the window had taken six weeks to make and was scheduled to be polished and shipped in time for the open house, which was two weeks away. Talk about a time crunch! Haha

“When the tremor hit, the window swung wildly but amazingly escaped any damage,” Hawkins wrote. “Other glass projects in the factory were shattered, ruined beyond repair. The window arrived, intact, one week before the temple opened for public viewing.”⠀⠀

President Nelson has recently commented that the Lord will perform some of his greatest miracles between now and when he comes again. These miracles that happened quite a few years ago are just the beginning. I believe that as the world gets crazier and as we get closer to His second coming, we will see more and more miracles. Probably also because we will need more miracles hahaha. Sometimes we may have to look for them as we seek His hand in our lives. But He truly is in the details, and as we seek Him – we will find Him.