Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash
The opening scene of Toy Story 2 features the great Buzz Lightyear wandering through a dangerous planet, blasting enemies, and using his incredible gadgets in order to infiltrate the evil Emperor Zurg’s secret lair and destroy the source of his power. After Lightyear fights off dangerous robots and escapes vicious traps and finally confronts Zurg, the great showdown begins. The final battle. Zurg shoots at Lightyear with his powerful cannon, but Lightyear deflects with a metal shield he finds laying around. Then Lightyear takes a page out of Oddjob’s playbook and throws the metal at Zurg’s face, distracting him long enough to jump over and land behind the evil one, just in time to…get blasted to bits.
Sure, we quickly realize that this exciting sequence of events is just a video game that Rex is playing, not the death of the real Buzz Lightyear, but I still don’t know how that shocking first moment in an otherwise family-friendly film didn’t scar us as children. Seriously. I mean…you opened your movie by killing the hero. Wow.
Throughout the movie, Rex is obsessed with figuring out how to win the video game and defeat Zurg. He even stops during their vital mission to rescue Woody – who was in real, not-made-up danger – to read the video game’s strategy guide at Al’s Toy Barn. While I enjoyed their jab at video game strategy guides, because that whole industry is a nuisance for video game players who grew up before the internet made them obsolete, that was not a wise decision by Rex. Then again, he’s a toy dinosaur made of plastic. I’m probably being too hard on him.
In the strategy guide, Rex learns that the real entrance to Zurg’s secret lair is in the shadows to the left. This little plot twist provides some added insight on their mission and makes for an amazing scene where another toy Buzz Lightyear fights off a toy Zurg…while spoofing one of the greatest scenes in film history as Zurg declares, “No. I am your father.”
It’s funny to me that this scene is the first thing that I think of when I think about shadows. If you want another great Disney shadow reference, there’s the scene in Lion King where Mufasa tells Simba that that everything the light touches is their kingdom. And, like children do, Simba immediately asks what that shadowy place is. After all, that’s one place that the light does not touch, so I guess it’s like an embassy, or something.
There is another kind of Shadow that exists that we will not discuss, but believe me when I tell you that it is much, much worse. (Property of Universal Pictures)
There’s another type of scene from movies that involves a shadow. In a lot of movies, the heroes are walking along minding their own business when one of them will say something about the big-bad that they’re out to fight. Or perhaps it’ll be like in The Princess Bride where Westley says that he doesn’t think the rodents of unusual size exist while walking through the Fire Swamp, and then he is immediately attacked by a rodent of unusual size.
When the heroes see a shadow creep along the ground and overtake them, they recognize that the mood has changed. The danger has arrived.
The shadows are not to be trifled with. There is something inherently spooky and uncertain about the shadows. When we can’t see the danger, our mind imagines what must be there. That shadow is a presence, all in itself. We don’t see what causes the shadow, maybe, but we recognize that it means something is there.
There is no mistaking the fact that our world is underneath a shadow right now. We are shrouded in a cloud of uncertainty and despair. It’s not unlike the shadow that sat over our nation during the Cold War when there was the shadow of nuclear war, or the shadow of terrorism that sat over us after 9/11. Except now, this shadow is threatening to swallow the whole world in panic and despair.
No matter what figures you look at or graphs you examine, the simple reality is that people are dying. People are getting sick and fighting an infection that has changed everything we do and how we do it.
I’ll admit that my regular routine hasn’t changed all that much. I’m still working my regular schedule. My wife is still working something like her regular schedule. I have two small children who don’t understand what social distancing means, the only difference being that now we’re locked at home with them. Not all that much has changed for us.
Even so. Even if you are still fortunate enough to be working and receiving a regular paycheck right now. Even if you say that you aren’t scared of this disease because you don’t think it will hurt you personally – and I will admit that this is my attitude most of the time, along with the fact that, again, my schedule and routine have barely changed at all. Even if you are physically fine, we are still living under a shadow.
Words like “pandemic” and “quarantine” and “self-isolation” are now part of our daily lexicon. That’s a bit odd, to say the least, and none of us ever thought that this would be our reality. Not really.
That’s a shadow. It isn’t the first time we’ve faced a shadow in life, not really, but it is probably the first time that most of us have lived in a world where face masks are common attire for shopping trips and stores are limiting how much you can buy.
Right now, we are like the hapless ants in A Bug’s Life, the ones who live under the shadow of the grasshoppers and live under the heel of those tyrannical grasshoppers. That’s the shadow we are living in right now, the shadow that hangs over us and we feel like all we can do is keep our heads down and hope it leaves us alone.
There’s a pretty famous passage in Scripture that talks about shadows like this one. You probably know what I’m talking about already, don’t you?
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.Psalms 23:4 NKJV*
In the most famous Psalm, we are reminded that God is with us, watching over us no matter what shadow we walk under. No matter what shadow we fear, God is with us.
That is an encouragement, for sure. No doubt. Even though we walk in the shadows, even though we walk in a place of danger, we do not have to fear evil because God is with us.
And make no mistake. Every shadow like this one is a result of evil. Is a type of evil. There are some charlatans and self-important blowhards who like to say that these shadows are a direct result of this person’s sin or that group’s sin or what have you, but they’re wrong. These shadows are a result of sin period. This world is broken and sinful and these shadows hover over the world because of that sin. Sometimes, yes. These shadows are a direct result of some specific sin. Think back to my Cold War example or the example of 9/11. More often than not, however, these shadows exist because of sin in general. Because the world is not what it could be. What it should be.
But there’s a far more important shadow to consider. One that has been on my mind a lot the last few days ever since I came across Psalm 57. I’ve been trying to read one or two Psalms a day for a while now and reading each Psalm two days in a row.
I’ve been stuck on Psalm 57 for about a week now because the very first verse grabbed me and has not let me go yet.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy! I look to you for protection. I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until the danger passes by.
Psalms 57:1 NLT*
I’m a proud recipient of an English degree from the University of Georgia, and one of my English classes (ENGL 4000) had us write a series of papers throughout the semester. First, we had to write about one scene in Hamlet and how that scene was integral to the context of the whole play. Then in our next paper, we had to write about one line. Yes, we all saw where this was going, too. In the final paper, we had to write about a single word: One word, and how that one word made the entire play of Hamlet work.
Hear me out. I am well aware of the history of Psalms and how it was put together by several different authors. I know that about half of the Psalms were written by David, and even the writing of those Psalms must have been spread out through the span of his entire life. Perhaps I’m putting too much stock into this whole hullabaloo.
But I don’t think so.
When I see the shadows mentioned again in Psalms, my mind can’t help but think of them in direct contrast to the other famous mention of shadows in Psalms.
In the famous Twenty-Third Psalm, we are told that we do not have to fear no matter what shadow we walk through – even the shadow of Death, itself. (Fun fact, this line references a specific geographical place in Israel that was very shadowy and very dangerous because of brigands and bandits who liked to ambush people there, so that’s some vital context.)
In the first verse of Psalm 57, though, we are told of a greater shadow that we need not fear at all.
Remember what I said earlier? A shadow is often used in movies to signal a presence. Something or someone is there, waiting to be noticed. Most of the time, we think of these shadows as a malevolent force waiting to do us harm. The shadows are to be feared.
Sometimes, though, that shadow is something else. That shadow is signaling the arrival of a helpful presence. It is telling us that the danger is over and that we need not fear anymore.
In Psalm 57, we are reminded that there is a greater shadow than any other we might face in life, and that’s the shadow of God’s presence. The shadow of God’s love and protection, reminding us that we are never alone.
Okay, so this bird wasn’t real, but you get the point. And ultimately Kevin Spacey was eaten by a bird, so I didn’t totally lie. (Property of Disney-Pixar)
Think back to my example of the grasshoppers in A Bug’s Life. For most of the movie, the ants were living under the shadow of the grasshoppers and their boss, Kevin Spacey. I mean…he wasn’t literally just Kevin Spacey, but can you imagine Kevin Spacey leading an army of grasshoppers in real life?
Towards the end, though, there’s a scene where another shadow hovers over the camp and it scares the grasshoppers worse than anything else. They see the shadow of a bird.
See, as scary as those grasshoppers were, that bird was much, much worse. Because it would eat the grasshoppers.
When we see these metaphorical shadows in life, it can be comforting to remember that God is with us. It can be comforting to remember that God walks with us through the shadows.
It can be far more comforting, however, to realize that the shadow of God’s presence terrifies and overrules the shadows that scare us. He is our protection. He is our benevolent shadow, providing us with cover from the dangers around us.
That’s not to say that we won’t ever experience troubles in life or that these shadows can’t touch us. And I’m certainly not saying that God will protect His people from the effects of this particular shadow in life. It would be heretical to say that God is only letting non-Christians die of the Coronavirus and that anyone who gets sick is sick because they don’t love God.
Just…no.
What I am saying, though, is that God’s shadow will protect us and watch over us, even if we go through that other shadow. Even if we get sick, God is with us. Even if we lose our job because of a global pandemic, God is with us. Even if we get sick and never physically recover, God is with us.
Our God is greater than any storm cloud, any troubles, any trials, and even any pandemics. Even though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we are walking under an even greater shadow. And this one isn’t meant to scare us. This one, the shadow of God’s presence, is meant to scare the things that scare us. That’s how great our God is. He makes the darkness run and hide.
* Normally I use just the New Living Translation (NLT), but the NLT version of Psalm 23 doesn’t use the word “shadow.” NLT refers to it as “the darkest valley” or “the dark valley of death.” In this case, I used the New King James Version because it mentions the shadow specifically and because that’s the version that most people are familiar with. I never want anyone to think that I “pick and choose” the versions I like to make a point that is outside the fair context of Scripture, and I want to operate in the clearest, most transparent manner when it comes to Scripture.