AUSTIN, Texas — On Friday morning, Christmas Eve, a man broke all the stained-glass windows of Our Savior Lutheran Church with a parking sign.
"When I got here, I saw the footage from our facilities director, and the guy's obviously frustrated with something or just not right in his mind," Pastor Eric Borchers said. "So how did it make me feel? It is what it is. It is what it is."
Soon after seeing the video, Borchers posted a live video to Facebook telling his parishioners what had happened.
"Within 15 minutes, over 200 people had seen it," Borchers said.
Friday afternoon, Borchers found himself surrounded by the church's maintenance staff and volunteers who helped clean up the glass and board up the windows.
Within a few hours, the parishioners had cut plywood to fit the windows and screwed everything together. Borchers said his message for the Christmas Eve service still fits, despite the vandalism that took place Friday morning.
"It's all about how we live in a completely chaotic world and we have a savior who came into this world for us to make things right," Borchers said. "It's not going to all get better, but we have someone to lean on, someone to save us, someone to redeem us."
Friday night, the church service started on schedule. Borchers has no plans to change the schedule for the weekend as a result of the broken windows.
To the person who destroyed the windows with a handicapped parking sign, he has a simple message:
"Complete and total forgiveness. I don't care about the windows. I mean, they're beautiful. And our our parishioners absolutely love them ... but forgiveness. The message to him is going to be forgiveness."
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