WHAT color are shadows? Oh, black,
naturally; everybody knows that. Oh, but is a shadow black?
Not always, as this little tale reveals:
My unit of nine-year-old juniors—the
Kookaburras they called themselves—on a nature hike at camp,
stood on the trail above Lake Woodhaven, and looked at the
water through a fringe of trees.
"What color is the water?" I asked.
"White!" they shouted.
"What makes it white?"
"Shadows!" they all cried, and one added,
"Shadows of the clouds."
So shadows may be white.
Simkin Street runs west, and the sunsets
one sees down it are little foretastes of the New Jerusalem.
And half the glories of those sunsets are shadows—shadows
that are rich blue and dusty rose and burnt orange and smoky
flame colored. And even after the orb is far sunken, and the
sunset colors have burned down to ardent coals along the
hilltop horizon, the clouds above are transfused with flame.
Shadows are sunset colored.
The boarding school where I once taught
was surrounded by a maple grove so dense that little grew
under the trees, and it was like walking through an arcade
to pass beneath them. Surely one was in the black shadows
then. But in summer that shade was a delicate green shot
through with gold. And in winter, when Minnesota was
knee-deep in snow, the rising sun sent long shadows of the
leafless maples across the snow; and those shadows were
deep, intense purple and crimson. Shadows are royal colors.
A shadow is cast by an object that
intercepts some of the passing light rays—not all, for then
we would have total darkness and no shadows at all. The
intercepting more or less breaks up the light; hence we may
have all the colors of the rainbow in shadows. And the
colors partake somewhat of the colors of the objects that
cast them. Shadows and reflections are almost
indistinguishable, and both may be any color, depending on
the source.
"For I am sometimes in the sunshine,
Sometimes in the shadows, Walking every day with Him."
So sang the juniors around their
campfire. Walking every day with Jesus does not insure our
walking without shadows. Jesus Himself walked always with
the shadow of the cross over Him. Our walk with Him will be
through many a shadow. But those shadows need not be
black—will not be black for the Christian. They will be
reflections of the rainbow around the Father's throne. They
will glow with deep shades of rich color reflected from the
glory of God and the good angels, whose presence near us is
concealed by the shadows. One who has ever walked with God
in the shadows understandingly will sincerely say:
"I'd rather walk with Him in the dark
Than walk alone in the light."
