A Copy and a Shadow

In the letter to the Hebrews the writer speaks about the priest being “copy and shadow of what is in heaven.” Have you ever thought of yourself and your life as a copy of something else? Or do you consider yourself to be an original?

Elsewhere, in one of the psalms, it says that God had an idea of who we could be even before we were conceived: “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”

What an amazing thought: God knew everything about each one of us before we even existed. And how agonizing it is when we fall away from God’s intention and pursue the unruly desires of our own unfettered hearts. This is what Cain must have meant when he lamented that his crime had rendered him “a restless wanderer of the earth.”

Unlinked from God’s intention for us, we stray to the right and the left looking for satisfaction where nothing lasting and beneficial can be found. But when we acknowledge at long last that we know we are known and we experience the transformation that brings us back into the genuine comfort of God’s good orbit, then we can say with a full and blessed heart: “I once was lost and now am found, was blind but now I see.”