The church is beautifully pictured as a building raised by heaven's power and designed by God's own skill. This spiritual house cannot be dark—for just as the Israelites had light in their dwellings, so must we have windows to let light in and to let us gaze abroad. And these windows? They are precious as agates! The ways we behold our Lord, heaven, and spiritual truth should be treasured above all else.

Now, agates are not the clearest of stones. They're cloudy at best: "Our knowledge of that life is small, our eye of faith is dim." Faith is one of these precious agate windows. But alas! How often it gets fogged up and clouded over! We see through it darkly, and we mistake much that we do see. Yet listen: if we cannot gaze through windows of pure diamond and know even as we are known, it is still a glorious thing to behold the Altogether Lovely One, even through the hazy agate glass.

Experience is another of these dim but precious windows, yielding to us a subdued religious light. Through it we see the sufferings of the Man of Sorrows reflected in our own afflictions. Think about it—our weak eyes could not endure windows of transparent glass to let in the Master's glory! But when those windows are dimmed with weeping? Then the beams of the Sun of Righteousness are tempered, and they shine through the agate glass with a soft radiance inexpressibly soothing to tempted souls.

Sanctification, as it conforms us to our Lord, is yet another agate window. Only as we become heavenly can we comprehend heavenly things. The pure in heart see a pure God. Those who are like Jesus see him as he is. And here's the tension: because we are so little like him, the window is but agate; because we are somewhat like him, it is agate! Not clear glass, but not brick wall either.

We thank God for what we have, and we long for more. When shall we see God and Jesus, and heaven and truth, face to face? When will these cloudy windows become clear? Until then, we peer through the agate and wait.