All of us cast shadows of some kind along the road of life. These shadows affect the people with whom we come into contact. I was inspired in my reflection on this by a story in the Book of Acts. Because of the many miracles Peter had performed, the sick of Jerusalem persuaded their friends to bring them and lay them on the streets that Peter’s shadow might fall upon them. They believed that his shadow would have healing power. The validity of the people’s faith is not the question here. The truth of which we must always be aware is that we cast shadows as we walk the road of life.
There is no way of telling how far the shadow we cast is going to stretch. Men laughed at the scrawny lad as he crammed over his books during his lunch hour in the factory. “Look at that dreamer,” they would say. But later that lad wrote a book, Das Kapi-tal, and his shadow has stretched through the years.
Karl Marx has perhaps affected more men than any other than Jesus himself. His shadow is a dread for the free world even now.
Rousseau wrote a great book called The Social Contact. It was an epoch-making volume which stirred the imagination of the common people. It was an appeal for a new concern for the poor and underprivileged. Yet while it stirred the hearts of the common people, the rulers and princes of the day laughed it down. They could not believe that the new day proclaimed by Rousseau would ever come. But they left God out of their thinking. Not many years afterward, Thomas Carlyle wrote of those who treated the vision with scorn, “Their skins went to make the second edition of the book.” The proud princes and rulers did not know the powerful shadow the pen of a little man could cast.
These are the vivid examples of the power of one’s shadows. The shadows of men down through the years have provided the force for the great movements of history. Don’t forget your shadow is going to affect someone somewhere. Your influence is going to be felt.
The question is, what kind of shadow are you casting?