How many Christmas cards have you had this year featuring the ‘three wise men’? The story of these enigmatic visitors, in St Matthew’s Gospel, is familiar. However, what follows straight afterwards in the gospel account is not mentioned so often. The story is shown in one of the windows in St Mary’s Chapel. The left hand scene is of an angel telling Joseph, shown with his carpenter’s tools, to escape with Jesus and Mary to Egypt. The right hand window shows the family in Egypt, complete with hieroglyphs in the background. Meanwhile, back in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, Herod was slaughtering all the young boys to ensure they could not be a threat to his power.

The window was donated by Margaret Cooper, the widow of Dr Cooper who was minister of the church in 1898, the last time St Mary’s Chapel was restored. It was designed and installed by Marjorie Kemp in 1950. Unfortunately it suffered vandalism. Part of Phase 1 of the Mither Kirk Project was to repair all the glass. In this case, that was quite a challenge. One of the photographs shows the ‘window’ as it was before the work – the right hand light consisted of some bits of broken glass in a black plastic bag! The other photograph shows the window as it now is, fully restored to its original beauty.

It is a sobering to think of our world today. How many are killed so that they are not a threat? How many families have been refugees this Christmas?