Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, February 9, 2025
What a week for weather! Snow showers, rain drizzles, slush, ice, repeat and repeat!
We’ve kept up with our twice-a-day walking, though. I’m thankful for my hiking pole which helps me navigate through the snowy, slushy, icy spots, and I keep my eyes on the path.
This careful ground surveillance is fun, because I can see the vast variety of shoe and boot prints of those who’d trod the path before us. We’ve made canine as well as human friends in our neighborhood, so we try to guess if we’re looking at the pawprints of Winston, Molly, or Zsa Zsa.
Looking at boot, shoe, and paw prints day after day reminds me of the poem, “Footprints,” also known as “Footprints in the Sand.” Many years ago at a pastors’ wives’ luncheon I had the privilege of sitting next to the guest of honor, Margaret Fishback Powers, the author of “Footprints.” (She originally titled the poem, “I Had a Dream.”)
Margaret was a softspoken, humble woman who had been traveling for many years with her husband Paul as an evangelistic team. I was glad I could share with her a time that her poem had been a great comfort in the life of one of my relatives.
At the time I met Margaret, two other women had each claimed to be the true author of the poem. Eventually, over a dozen women contested the authorship. I was sad to see such controversy and court action over a poem that is all about personal peace, a poem that has been the source of comfort for millions of people.
The poem’s narrator describes a dream she had of scenes from her life, noticing in each there were two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to her and one belonging to the Lord.
Then she saw that at the lowest, saddest points in her life there was only one set of footprints, which greatly troubled her. She asked the Lord why He had abandoned her when she needed Him the most.
He responded that He loved her and would never leave her, ending with the reassurance that, “When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”
Have you ever felt so down, so depleted, so weary and worried that you didn’t know if you could go on? What a lifesaver it is to know the Lord will carry us when we can’t carry on in our own strength.
Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
(Isaiah 46:4 NIV)
He said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will be true to me”
and so he became their Savior.
In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
(Isaiah 63:8, 9)
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
(1 Peter 5:6, 7)
He carries us because He cares.
One morning this week as I was admiring the varied snow prints on our path, I thought I caught a glimpse of a heart on one boot print. I backed up to look again, and it wasn’t as distinct a heart shape as I’d thought.
As a child I learned to play a one-handed version of the tune, “Heart and Soul” on our piano. But now I started thinking about Hearts and Soles.
I’m thinking how Jesus tenderly washed the soles of all twelve of His disciples, hours before He was betrayed by one of them and abandoned by all the others. How He must have longed to wash all their souls clean as well.
I’m thinking how Jesus walked this earth depending on His Father for direction and strength, so that we could do the same. His sandal soles bore distinct heart shapes, because His great heart of love walked Him up Calvary’s hill to the cross.
This started out as a meditation on snowy, then sandy, footprints, and has ended up as a Valentine. The best one of all. I love the line in the hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross” that declares, “And I love that old cross, where the Dearest and Best for a world of lost sinners was slain.”
The Dearest and Best. Yes.