Barbie Loflin

I was thinking today about the now famous poem, Footprints in the Sand.  You know the one.  It tells the story of a person looking back on his life and seeing two perfect sets of footprints side by side in the sand, only to find that during the most difficult parts of his journey, one set completely disappeared.  He turns and asks the Lord why He would leave him at such times, and the Lord replies, “Son, these are the times that I carried you…” To which we all respond, Ahhhhhh.

Well, as I pondered the poet’s words, I decided to look back at my own path.  I must say the image that struck me was something completely different.  My journey did not have two sets of pristine footprints in the sand.  Mine were more like a mosaic of circles, as I went around the same mountain over and over and over again.   Then they seemed to trace back and forth, over and over, so much so that they dug a pretty deep ditch or two.  I remembered those quite clearly.  God had to jump and save me from those.

Then there were even messier moments.

Once out of the ditch, my picture looked a little more like handprints and a nose digging through the dirt, rather than footprints.   Must have been a face-down, dragging kind of journey.   These were followed up by a plethora of me-moments; double-minded days full of zigzags, as I just couldn’t make up my mind which way to go, and areas where my propensity to disobey made it look a little like MJ’s moon-walking, while my outright rebellion much like back handsprings followed by landings I didn’t quite stick.

As I imagined my own war-zone-footprint- journey, I thought, God, how in the world did you ever mend all my frayed ends?  How did you gather this bob-and-weaver and put me on a stable path?  My footprints are crazy, Father.   My sand-life a joke.  You have carried, pursued, covered, chased, waited… with sand flying.

I was such a Jonah.

But then something wonderful happened.  Just about the time I began to listen to the accuser of the brethren, telling me how bad I had been, I heard God whisper through my spirit, “When did you stop running?”  What?  “When did the pictures change?”

And then I saw it.  The turn in the road.  The moment when my footprints started to come together and make sense.  It wasn’t a salvation moment.  I had been saved – saved too long to still be this much of a mess.  It was another kind of moment.   It was small and massive at the same time.  I could see me sitting in a room at church watching a bible study video.  As I watched the video, I so clearly remembered hearing the woman say, “If the Bible bores you, Ask God to give you a love for His Word.”

What!?

I had an epiphany!  In all of my years serving Jesus Christ, I had never thought to pray about such a thing.  Because, you see, if I were to pray and ask Him to give me a love for His Word, the He would know I didn’t love it.  (Oh Jesus, how old do we have to be to put away childish things?)  In a split second, the thought followed, I suppose He knows that I don’t like to read my Bible.   I know it sounds funny, but I am pretty sure we all think we have hidden something from God at one point or another in our lives.

That day I began to pray, “God, please give me a genuine love for Your Word.  Make it real to me.  Make it relevant for me.  Let me absolutely fall in love with Your Words… everything that tells me about You.”  And guess what?  He did it.  His Word became water to me.  He gave the Word a pulse.  When I would read it I could hear His heartbeat, feel His breath across the page.  I could not get enough.  I did not just develop a like, I lost my heart completely.  The more I read, the more I came to know Him.  The more I came to know Him, the more I trusted Him.  The more I trusted Him, the more I believed Him.  And the more I believed Him, the more stable my walk became.  My foundation of religious practices was traded for a foundation of Truth, and my love for God’s house became a love for God Himself.

I stopped looking back.  I stopped running away.  I stopped being double-minded, and I stopped living my life repeating yesterday’s mistakes (for the most part:0)

Today my prayer is that there be only one set of footprints.  Not because He is carrying me, but because I walk in His footsteps as He goes before me.

Have you checked out your own prints lately?