Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: Zion Lutheran Church

Studio Name: Hauser Art Class Company, Inc.

City: Ferndale

Window Shape: 5 (gothic arched, 2 vertical sections)

Date of Window: 1970

Subject/Title of Window: The Burning Bush, The 10 Commandments

Brief Description of Subject: This is the third of the four aisle windows that use material from the Old Testament.
 
The left lancet is named "The Burning Bush." The burning bush appears in the story of God's calling of Moses. "Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up." (Exodus 3:2)
 
The right lancet pictures the tablets of the Ten Commandments. On the day Moses received the Commandments, God got everyone's attention with thunder and lightning, and sent Moses to the top of Mt. Sinai to receive what he called the "10 words" (commandments). St. Augustine  observed that some of the Commandments are obligations to God while others are obligations to our fellow man. Artists' depictions, as in this window, have commonly placed the obligations to God on the left tablet, and obligations to our fellow man on the right tablet. 
 
In the Bible there are at least 13 commandments listed by Moses, so it was necessary to condense them to 10. Different religious sects had different ways of doing this. The Catholic Church adopted St. Augustine's version. He numbered them, and purposely had only three commandments that pertain to our obligations to God. This was done to suggest the Trinity. Most Protestant do not use St. Augustine's version, and their versions have four commandments that pertain to our obligations to God. Upon installation of this window, the Church noticed the artist had mistakenly put four on the left tablet where as the Lutheran version follows St. Augustine's version. Most likely the Lutheran version follows St. Augustine's version as Martin Luther was an Augustinian Friar. His differences were with the Catholic Church not St. Augustine.
 
The artist for this window was Edward Glubka.

Height: 84"

Width: 51"

Type of Glass and Technique: Antique or Cathedral Glass, Enamel Paint, Lead Came

The MSGC is a constantly evolving database. Not all the data that has been collected by volunteers has been sorted and entered. Not every building has been completely documented.

All images in the Index are either born-digital photographs of windows or buildings or are scans of slides, prints, or other published sources. These images have been provided by volunteers and the quality of the material varies widely.

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