Over the last few weeks trips to the beach, barbecues, and sun cream have all reappeared.  There have been many days of bright sunshine. We enjoy the sunshine, the longer days, the opportunity to get out in the garden, the colours of the world around us even seem brighter.

God made the sun and it’s a vital part of creation – its heat ripens the grain, causes flowers to spring up, and provides us with warmth and energy. We enjoy the sun, and we need the sun as well.

But there are dangers in the sun. We’re told don’t look directly at the sun; it can damage your eyes. Then if you stay out in the full heat for too long, you can suffer sunstroke, and get burnt as well. There are dangers from something so powerful.

The sun is used in the Bible to speak to us of the brightness of God’s presence – Psalm 84:11, ‘For the Lord God is a sun and shield’.

The Lord gives us life and light, shines upon us in His grace and goodness and yet He is so powerful, so mighty, so holy. No-one can look on Him and live – He is too glorious for us.

Shadows…

The sun is so bright and powerful but as the sun goes down there are normally shadows as well.

In our lives in this world there are also shadows. One of those shadows is the shadow of sin. The world is not all bright and sunny – there are wrongs in this world. It says in the Bible that ‘iniquity shall abound’ and when we turn on the news that’s what we see and hear: sinful man rebelling against God and His ways.

And it’s not just out there in the world that sin casts its shadow; it casts its shadow in our own lives as well: things we have done and wish we hadn’t done, things we have said and wish we hadn’t said. Sometimes the past can cast a long shadow over us.

Then there was that beautiful garden of Eden at the beginning, but after Adam and Eve had sinned they wanted to hide away from God, to lurk in the shadows afraid to be in God’s presence. That dark shadow of guilt and shame hovers over us and follows us around and we can’t get rid of it by ourselves.

The shadow of sin casts another shadow – the shadow of death. The Psalmist says in Psalm 23, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me’.

That dark shadow reminds us there’s an end, a separation that we can’t avoid.

We think about the brightness of God’s presence and yet in this present world there are these very real dark shadows. The world we live in is not altogether bright; we long for something better than this.

But how can sinful people like us bear the brightness of God’s presence? How can we find a place in the glory of heaven?

Beneath the Cross of Jesus

The beautiful hymn Beneath the Cross of Jesus speaks about the ‘shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land, a home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of the noontide heat and the burden of the day’.

We come to Christ and find shelter, and safety and rest in the ‘shadow of a mighty rock’. 

The Gospels tell us when Christ hung upon the cross darkness covered the land from noon until 3 p.m. The time when the sun should be at its brightest was the time when Calvary was engulfed in darkness. God’s Son was surrounded by darkness as God ‘made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us’ (2 Cor. 5:21).

The cross of Christ is that place of shelter for us, where our sins are dealt with, forgiven and removed that we might be reconciled to God. That we might know the light and life that He gives and His shining upon us in His goodness and grace.

‘I take, O cross, your shadow

For my abiding place;

I ask no other sunshine than

The sunshine of His face …’

Marcus Hobson