Summer can bring fun surprises, especially to children as their world opens up to new and wondrous discoveries. For example, on a warm afternoon you take your child for a walk. And you’re asked, “What’s that following me, and walking just like me?” You look and smile. “It’s your shadow.”
From Peter Pan to Tom Sawyer, shadows have created interludes of playfulness: from trying to step on it, running away from it, and hiding from it.
As adults we smile at these carefree antics, dismissing them as a child’s game. But do we realize we have another kind of shadow? And we can’t keep it in a closet to put on as needed. It’s clothed on us permanently.
We talk about how Jesus loved us unbelievably. How He took our sins, and died on the cross in our place to give us eternal life. But do we discuss His futuristic thinking on how to protect those you love? He gave His loved ones an insurance policy to make sure we were not left defenseless and vulnerable. He provided an interim until we joined Him in Heaven.
After His brief three years, His preaching and healing ministry were over, but He said another comforter would come ~ when I go. “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever” (John 14:16, NKJV).
When we receive Christ as Savior, we feel like we’ve lost a 100 lb. weight off our shoulders. And our forever-‘spiritual shadow’, the gift of the Holy Spirit, fills us with a peace the world has never known.
Jesus didn’t say the Holy Spirit would leave, hide, and disappear from time to time to leave us floundering. He said, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, [our insurance policy] whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26). We are assured, and we can trust, that we’re covered with protection, and guided by God’s messenger each moment of the day.
God doesn’t do things halfway: He’s given us the capability of having ‘two’ shadows. The first comes as the sun shines on us, and a replica of our physical self dances off fences, walks or walls. The second is God’s personal ambassador, the Holy Spirit, who is constantly with us to reflect God’s grace and mind to us.
May we never forget we can share the salvation message when a child (or an adult) playfully discovers their shadow. And we have the opportunity to ask, “How would you like to have ‘two’ shadows? Not everyone does ~ but you can!”