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Shadow Living

I was struck by a comment from C. S. Lewis when he said that "right now we live in the Shadows, the real living comes later".  Of course what he was talking about is how life on earth - in this present form that we live in - is not the eternal life will someday experience.  That life will be glorious, without pain, without suffering, without death, without.... mosquitoes!  I throw that in because someone yesterday told me that mosquitoes must have come from the Fall!

Shadow living is a recognition that we live in a faint picture the real life ahead of us.  A Shadow by definition is an area where the direct light from the light source is blocked by the object and the silhouette it then projects.
Shadows are pictures of the real...
Shadows remind us of what is real...
What we don't see, but what we can know to be true.

we are people who live under a shadow of God's protection, the Psalmist says..
we are people who dwell in the region of the shadow of death, the Prophet says...
we are people whom God sent his Son - to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, the Gospel says...
We are people who are free from religious obligations under the old covenant because they were merely a shadow of the things to come, and now the real substance is in Jesus...Paul says

And James writes:  James 1:17-18 (ESV) 
17  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
18  Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. 

The real is God.
The real is the life that is in Him.
Eternity is now begun in our lives as we live in the Shadow of the Almighty.

Paul says, "...now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

I think C.S. Lewis had it right...

Peace

Comments

SarahJayne said…
I really like that quote by C.S. Lewis! One of my favorite parts in Narnia is the scene in The Last Battle where everyone realizes that Aslan's country was "the real thing," and their lives were just a shadow. :)

I never thought of this concept in relationship to dwelling "in the shadow of the Almight," though. Good food for thought...
March 5, 2013 at 11:07 AM
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