17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
I am amazed again and again at the lengths people will go to grasp shadows rather than the reality! The verse right before this one spells out some legalistic proscriptions that the false teachers in the Colossian church were putting out as requirements for Jesus-followers. They included diet and worship day proscriptions. They were all externals which were substitutes for the reality found in Jesus. Don’t think that there are no shadows today. Some folks travel around the world to go to a “revival” hoping that obedience to the Scriptures will become obsolete. If they can just “catch” what is happening in one place, then somehow the daily grind of everyday life will not matter. People too often seek the miracle, the high of the mountaintop because the obedience of the valley is work. We want the instant, when only the slow-roasted has real flavor. We seek Oprah emotions or “Makeover” tears instead of the connection with others in our own community. We seek reality at a distance because reality close at hand means that we have to be real with each other, that we have to drop the façade and let down the guard and create some real connection with another human being. But when we have been hurt in the past and we don’t want to risk that pain, so we substitute shadow for reality. We watch the carefully edited church service on TV because the local church is messy, real people with real body odor. Those people at church have problems. They are messed up. They need some help. That is why they are there. And that is why you need to be there also. You have problems. You are messed up. You need some help. It is in the rubbing of shoulders with real people that the crucible of the church brings out the best in people. When we are genuine and like Jesus with each other the barriers get dropped and we experience Jesus in the flesh. We know genuine joys and genuine sorrows. We experience the full range of true feelings, not like those scripted responses elicited by Hollywood’s programmed musical crescendos and special effects. When we are reaching out to each other as Jesus wants us to reach out, then we are truly alive. Until that happens we are living in a shadow world. We grasp but come up empty handed.
The Arnold Journey 