The Shadow pt.2

I was doing some editing yesterday for a post I titled “the shadow,” and I had an epiphany. In case you didn’t read it, (which you should!) I told the tale of a man who stands with his back to the sun, staring at his shadow. He stares into the darkness and declares the sun to be a myth. As night falls, he drifts further and further from the sun. He starts saying things like “the sun couldn’t exist, for how could it be so dark if a bright light existed?” He neglects the moon and its ability to reflect the sun’s rays, he ignores memories of turning around to see the sun’s blazing glory. He runs away from the thing he now claims can’t exist.

I wrote it in the context of hope and joy. I was moved to write it by my coworkers. We live a pampered office life with few real threats to our wellbeing. And yet, I hear the sounds of griping echoing through the cubicles. “Woe is me!” they say. “I have to help yet another customer! I have to take five steps in my air-conditioned office to press three keys on a keyboard to help another person!” Yes, I am exaggerating just a bit, but the sentiment is there. On the other hand, when I worked construction, they made the effort to make jokes, have fun, and make the day lighter. They developed that muscle in order to survive the day. We need to develop joy in order to have it. We don’t win the joy-lottery one day, we have to go to the joy-gym and develop our joy-muscles. We have to get our joy-jams going and get joy-gains. 

I believe the same is true of God. Although He is always there, we have to learn to fix our gaze upon Him. We have to tune in to the work He is doing in our lives. We have to learn to see Him in every moment of our lives. Knowing God goes far beyond a few minutes in the word in the morning, it’s every minute of every day! It’s learning to see Him in everything we do. From seeing His mercy on the good days to thanking Him for comfort the bad ones and everything in between. We must be learning to see God wherever you go. 

This could lead us down a rabbit hole of whether or not God has an active hand in our lives and the details of how that all works. I don’t see myself as qualified to go there. To me, the non-theologian, I see it like I see magic.In an instant, part of me says that God’s intervention couldn’t have happened. At the same time, part of me says that it has happened! So it is with God. I know there are debates raging about how this all works, and I want to one day hear about them, but right now it’s not on my agenda. 

However, I see nothing fair about not praying, not reading the bible, not making an honest effort to pursue the living God, then turning around and claiming that He can’t exist. He may not exist in the way you expect, He may not do the things you like, but to say He is not alive and well without making the honest pursuit is fair to no one. It is the same as locking yourself in a windowless room and saying there is no sun. You have to go looking in order to find it. You have to seek and in order to find. 

And I believe that, much like the sun, you don’t have to look very hard to find it. Although our eyes won’t let us stare at it directly, the sun allows us to see everything else in its fullest beauty. You can see it in the trees, in the mountains, in the warm embrace of a friend, and the tears of a loved one that fall next to yours. Even at night when we say it is dark, we still have the moon to reflect the sun’s rays. Even when things get dark, God loves us enough to send us a reminder that He has not abandoned us yet. It needs to be dark, it needs to be cold, we won’t understand all the why’s, but He has not left us to rot. 

I believe we can see reflections of God everywhere we go if we start looking. If we start observing the way things work and utilizing the bible as our litmus test, everything else falls into place. It becomes clear what the world is, who we are, and who we were meant to be. I pray these words guide you back to the King and His graceful right hand, ushering you forward like a shepherd leading his sheep towards green pastures. I pray you are guided home to the loving arms of your creator, for he loves you deeper than you can imagine.

Until next time

May peace be your guide.