Hit by the Shadow
IllustrationStory★★★★DONALD Grey Barnhouse, whose first wife died, was driving his kids from the funeral. One of the kids said, “Daddy, I don’t understand, where did Mommy go? I don’t understand what it means that she died.” Barnhouse was trying to figure out how to explain death to his kids when, just then, a truck passed by and cast a shadow over the car.
He looked back at the kids and said, “Kids, would you have rather been hit by the truck or hit by the shadow?” Well, of course, they would have rather been hit by the shadow because the shadow doesn’t hurt. It just darkens things for a moment. Then in his own wisdom, Barnhouse said these words, “Kids, when you die without Christ, you are hit by the truck.
When you die with Christ, you are only hit by the shadow. The shadow is all you get.”
The point
Donald Grey Barnhouse told his grieving children that dying without Christ is like being hit by a truck, but dying in Christ is only being hit by its harmless shadow.